The works of Honoré de Balzac...

thejealousiesof
a- country Town

(Les Rivalitts)

and

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

(L Interdiction)

XIV

TRANSLATED BY

ELLEN MARRIAGE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

AVIL PUBLISHING
PUBLISHERS- NEV DRK

COPYRIGHTED 1901

BY

3obn 2). B\>tl

All Rights Reserved

This Touraine Edition de Luxe of the
complete works of Honor e de Balzac is lim-
ited to twelve hundred and fifty sets, of which
this copy is number. *w.-hu'.

CONTENTS

MM

INTRODUCTION - vU

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN:

THE OW> MAID - ... I

THK COUACTION OF ANTIQUITIES - - 147

THE COMMISSION IN L UNACY - - 303

ILLUSTRATIONS

' PHOTOGRAVURES

"AH, SUSANNE, IS THAT YOU?" (il) - Frontispiece

PAGE

HE LISTENED PATIENTLY ... TO TALES
OF THE LITTLE WOES OF LIFE IN A
COUNTRY TOWN .... 8

AT ONCE HE TURNED TO LOOK AT ATH-
ANASE - - - -

76

WHAT IS IT, MONSIEUR ? " SHE ASKED,
POSING IN HER DISORDER -

- 242

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

AND
THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

INTRODUCTION

The two stories of Les Rivalites are more closely connected
than it was always Balzac's habit to connect the tales which
he united under a common heading. Not only are both de-
voted to the society of Alengon — a town and neighborhood
to which he had evidently strong, though it is not clearly
known what, attractions — not only is the Chevalier de Valois
a notable figure in each; but the community, imparted by the
elaborate study of the old noblesse in each case, is even greater
than either of these ties could give. Indeed, if instead of
Les Rivalites the author had chosen some label indicating
the study of the noblesse qui s'en va, it might almost have
been preferable. He did not, however; and though in a man
who so constantly changed his titles and his arrangements
the actual ones are not excessively authoritative, they have
authority.

La Vieille Fille, despite a certain tone of levity — which,
to do Balzac justice, is not common with him, and which
is rather hard upon the poor heroine — is one of the best and
liveliest things he ever did. The opening picture of the
Chevalier, though, like other things of its author's, especially
in his overtures, liable to the charge of being elaborated a
little too much, is one of the very best things of its kind, and
is a sort of locus classicus for its subject. The whole picture
of country town society is about as good as it can be; and
the only blot that I know is to be found in the sentimental
Athanase, who was not quite within Balzac's province, ex-

(vii)

viii INTRODUCTION

tensive as that province is. If we compare Mr. Augustus
Moddle, we shall see one of the not too numerous instances
in which Dickens has a clear advantage over Balzac; and
if it be retorted that Balzac's object was not to present a
merely ridiculous object, the rejoinder is not very far to seek.
Such a character, with such a fate as Balzac has assigned to
him, must be either humorously grotesque or unfeignedly
pathetic, and Balzac has not quite made Athanase either.

He is, however, if he is a failure, about the only failure in
the book, and he is atoned for by a whole bundle of successes.
Of the Chevalier, little more need be said. Balzac, it
must be remembered, was the oldest novelist of distinct
genius who had the opportunity of delineating the survivors
of the ancien regime from the life, and directly. It is certain
— even if we hesitate at believing him quite so familiar with
all the classes of higher society from the Faubourg down-
wards, as he would have us believe him — that he saw some-
thing of most of them, and his genius was unquestionably
of the kind to which a mere thumbnail study, a mere passing
view, suffices for the acquisition of a thorough working
knowledge of the object. In this case the Chevalier has
served, and not improperly served, as the original of a thou-
sand after-studies. His rival, less carefully projected, is also
perhaps a little less alive. Again, Balzac was old enough
to have foregathered with many men of the Revolution. But
the most characteristic of them were not long-lived, the
"little window" and other things having had a bad effect on
them; and most of those who survived had, by the time he
was old enough to take much notice, gone through metamor-
phoses of Bonapartism, Constitutional Liberalism, and what
not. But still du Bousquier is alive, as well as all the minor

INTRODUCTION lx

assistants and spectators in the battle for the old maid's hand.
Suzanne, that tactful and graceless Suzanne to whom we are
introduced first of all, is very much alive; and for all her
gracelessness, not at all disagreeable. I am only sorry that
she sold the counterfeit presentment of the Princess Goritza
after all.

Le Cabinet des Antiques, in its Alencon scenes, is a worthy
pendant to La Vieille FUle. The old-world honor of the
Marquis d'Esgrignon, the thankless sacrifices of Armande,
the prisca fides of Maitre Chesnel, present pictures for which,
out of Balzac, we can look only in Jules Sandeau, and which
in Sandeau, though they are presented with a more poetical
touch, have less masterly outline than here. One takes — or,
at least, I take — less interest in the ignoble intrigues of the
other side, except in so far as they menace the fortunes of a
worthy house unworthily represented. Victurnien d'Es-
grignon, like his companion, Savinien de Portenduere (who,
however, is, in every respect, a very much better fellow), does
not argue in Balzac any high opinion of the fits de famille.
He is, in fact, an extremely feeble youth, who does not seem to
have got much real satisfaction out of the escapades, for
which he risked not merely his family's fortune, but his own
honor, and who would seem to have been a rake, not from
natural taste and spirit and relish, but because it seemed to
him to be the proper thing to be. But the beginnings of the
fortune of the aspiring and intriguing Camusots are ad-
mirably painted; and Madame de Maufrigneuse, that rather
doubtful divinity, who appears so frequently in Balzac, here
acts the dea ex machina with considerable effect. And we end
well (as we generally do when Blondet, whom Balzac seems
more than once to adopt as mask, is the narrator), in the

x INTRODUCTION

last glimpse of Mile. Armande left alone with the remains
of her beauty, the ruins of everything dear to her — and
God.

These two stories were written at no long interval, yet,
for some reason or other, Balzac did not at once unite them.
La Vieille Fille first appeared in November and December
1836 in the Presse, and was inserted next year in the Scenes
de la Vie de Province. It had three chapter divisions. The
second part did not appear all at once. Its first instalment,
under the general title, came out in the Ghronique de Paris
even before the Vieille Fille appeared in March 1836; the
completion was not published (under the title of Les Rivalites
en Province) till the autumn of 1838, when the Constitu-
tionnel served as its vehicle. There were eight chapter divi-
sions in this latter. The whole of the Cabinet was published
in book form (with Gambara to follow it) in 1839. There
were some changes here; and the divisions were abolished
when the whole book in 1844 entered the Comedie. One of
the greatest mistakes which, in my humble judgment, the
organizers of the edition definitive have made, is their adop-
tion of Balzac's never executed separation of the pair and
deletion of the excellent joint-title Les Rivalites.

Lf Interdiction belongs with the Honorine group in Scenes
de la Vie Priv'ee, being placed here for purpose of con-
venience. It is good in its own way. It is indeed impossible
to say that there is not in the manner, though perhaps there
may be none in the fact, of the Marquis d'Espard's restitu-
tion, and the rest of it, a little touch of the madder side of
Quixotism; and one sees all the speculative and planning
Balzac in that notable scheme of the great work on China,
which brought in far, far more, I fear, than any work on

INTRODUCTION xl

China ever has or is likely to bring in to its devisers. But

the conduct of Popinot, in his interview with the Marquise,

is really admirable. The great scenes of fictitious finesse

do not always "come off ;" we do not invariably find ourselves

experiencing that sense of the ability of his characters which

the novelist appears to entertain, and expects us to entertain

likewise. But this is admirable; it is, with Charles de

Bernard's Le Gendre, perhaps the very best thing of the kind

to be found anywhere. This story would serve to show any

intelligent critic that genius of no ordinary kind had passed

that way.

L' Interdiction first appeared in the Chronique de Paris

in 1836; was at first separated from the Etudes Philoso-

phiques to be a Scene de la Vie Parisienne. G. S.

vol. 7 — 23

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN
THE OLD MAID

To M. Eug&ne Auguste Georges Louis Midy de la Greneraye
Surville, Civil Engineer of the Corps Royal, a token of affection
from his brother-in-law. De Balzac.

Plenty of people must have come across at least one
Chevalier de Valois in the provinces; there was one in
Normandy, another was extant at Bourges, a third flourished
at Alengon in the year 1816, and the South very likely pos-
sessed one of its own. But we are not here concerned with
the numbering of the Valois tribe. Some of them, no doubt,
were about as much of Valois as Louis XIV. was a Bourbon ;
and every Chevalier was so slightly acquainted with the rest,
that it was anything but politic to mention one of them when
speaking to another. All of them, however, agreed to leave
the Bourbons in perfect tranquillity on the throne of France,
for it is a little too well proven that Henri IV. succeeded to
the crown in default of heirs male in the Orleans, otherwise
the Valois branch ; so that if any Valois exist at all, they must
be descendants of Charles of Valois, Duke of Angouleme, and
Marie Touchet; and even there the direct line was extinct
(unless proof to the contrary is forthcoming) in the person
of the Abbe de Rothelin. As for the Valois Saint-Eemy,
descended from Henri II., they likewise came to an end with
the too famous Lamothe- Valois of the Diamond Necklace
affair.

Every one of the Chevaliers, if information is correct, was,
like the Chevalier of Alengon, an elderly noble, tall, lean, and
without fortune. The Bourges Chevalier had emigrated, the

[1)

2 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

Touraine Valois went into hiding during the Revolution, and
the Alen^on Chevalier was mixed up in the Vendean war,
and implicated to some extent in Chouannerie. The last-
named gentleman spent the most part of his youth in Paris,
where, at the age of thirty, the Revolution broke in upon his
career of conquests. Accepted as a true Valois by persons
of the highest quality in his province, the Chevalier de Valois
d'Alencon (like his namesakes) was remarkable for his fine
manners, and had evidently been accustomed to move in the
best society.

He dined out every day, and played cards of an evening,
and, thanks to one of his weaknesses, was regarded as a great
wit; he had a habit of relating a host of anecdotes of the
times of Louis Quinze, and those who heard his stories for the
first time thought them passably well narrated. The Chevalier
de Valois, moreover, had one virtue ; he refrained from repeat-
ing his own good sayings, and never alluded to his conquests,
albeit his smiles and airs were delightfully indiscreet. The
old gentleman took full advantage of the old-fashioned
Voltairean noble's privilege of staying away from Mass, but
his irreligion was very tenderly dealt with out of regard for
his devotion to the Royalist cause.

One of his most remarkable graces (Mole must have
learned it of him) was his way of taking snuff from an old-
fashioned snuff-box with a portrait of a lady on the lid. The
Princess Goritza, a lovely Hungarian, had been famous for
her beauty towards the end of the reign of Louis XV. ; and
the Chevalier could never speak without emotion of the
foreign great lady whom he loved in his youth, for whom he
had fought a duel with M. de Lauzun.

But by this time the Chevalier had lived fifty-eight years,
-and if he owned to but fifty of them, he might safely indulge
himself in that harmless deceit. Thin, fair-complexioned
men, among other privileges, retain that youthfulness of shape
which in men, as in women, contributes as much as anything
to stave off any appearance of age. And, indeed, it is a fact
that all the life, or rather, all the grace, which is the expres-

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 3

sion of life, lies in the figure. Among the Chevalier's per-
sonal traits, mention must be made of the portentous nose
with which Nature had endowed him. It cut a pallid
countenance sharply into two sections which seemed to have
nothing to do with each other; so much so, indeed, that only
one-half of his face would flush with the exertion of digestion
after dinner; all the glow being confined to the left side, a
phenomenon worthy of note in times when physiology is so
much occupied with the human heart. M. de Valois' health
was not apparently robust, judging by his long, thin legs,
lean frame, and sallow complexion; but he ate like an ogre,
alleging, doubtless by way of excuse for his voracity, that he
suffered from a complaint known in the provinces as a "hot
liver." The flush on his left cheek confirmed the story; but
in a land where meab are developed on the lines of thirty or
forty dishes, and last for four hours at a stretch, the
Chevalier's abnormal appetite might well seem to be a special
mark of the favor of Providence vouchsafed to the good town.
That flush on the left cheek, according to divers medical
authorities, is a sign of prodigality of heart ; and, indeed, the
Chevalier's past record of gallantry might seem to confirm
a professional dictum for which the present chronicler (most
fortunately) is in nowise responsible. But in spite of these
symptoms, M. de Valois was of nervous temperament, and in
consequence long-lived; and if his liver was hot, to use the
old-fashioned phrase, his heart was not a whit less inflamma-
ble. If there was a line worn here and there in his face, and
a silver thread or so in his hair, an experienced eye would
have discerned in these signs and tokens the stigmata of
desire, the furrows traced by past pleasure. And, in fact, in
his face, the unmistakable marks of the crow's foot and the
serpent's tooth took the shape of the delicate wrinkles so
prized at the court of Cytherea.

Everything about the gallant Chevalier revealed the ladies'
man." So minutely careful was he over his ablutions, that
it was a pleasure to see his cheeks; they might have been
brushed over with some miraculous water. That portion of

4 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

his head which the hair refused to hide from view shone like
ivory. His eyebrows, like his hair, had a youthful look, so
carefully was their growth trained and regulated by the comb.
A naturally fair skin seemed to be yet further whitened by
some mysterious preparation; and while the Chevalier never
used scent, there was about him, as it were, a perfume of
youth which enhanced the freshness of his looks. His hands,
that told of race, were as carefully kept as if they belonged
to some coxcomb of the gentler sex ; you could not help notic-
ing those rose-pink neatly-trimmed finger-nails. Indeed, but
for his lordly superlative nose, the Chevalier would have
looked like a doll.

It takes some resolution to spoil this portrait with the ad-
mission of a foible ; the Chevalier put cotton wool in his ears,
and still continued to wear ear-rings — two tiny negroes' heads
set with brilliants. They were of admirable workmanship,
it is true, and their owner was so far attached to the singular
appendages, that he used to justify his fancy by saying "that
his sick headaches had left him since his ears were pierced."
He used to suffer from sick headaches. The Chevalier is not
held up as a flawless character; but even if an old bachelor's
heart sends too much blood to his face, is he never therefore
to be forgiven for his adorable absurdities? Perhaps (who
knows?) there are sublime secrets hidden away beneath them.
And besides, the Chevalier de Valois made amends for his
negroes' heads with such a variety of other and different
charms, that society ought to have felt itself sufficiently com-
pensated. He really was at great pains to conceal his age and
to make himself agreeable.

First and foremost, witness the extreme care which he gave
to his linen, the one distinction in dress which a gentleman
may permit himself in modern days. The Chevalier's linen
was invariably fine and white, as befitted a noble. His coat,
though remarkably neat, was always somewhat worn, but spot-
less and uncreased. The preservation of this garment
bordered on the miraculous in the opinion of those who
noticed the Chevalier's elegant indifference on this head; not

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 6

that he went so far as to scrape his clothes with broken glass
(a refinement invented by the Prince of Wales), but he set
himself to carry out the first principles of dress as laid down
by Englishmen of the very highest and finest fashion, and this
with a personal element of coxcombry which Alencon was
scarcely capable of appreciating. Does the world owe no
esteem to those that take such pains for it? And what was
all this labor but the fulfilment of that very hardest of sayings
in the Gospel, which bids us return good for evil ? The fresh-
ness of the toilet, the care for dress, suited well with the
Chevalier's blue eyes, ivory teeth, and bland personality ; still,
the superannuated Adonis had nothing masculine in his ap-
pearance, and it would seem that he employed the illusion
of the toilet to hide the ravages of other than military
campaigns.

To tell the whole truth, the Chevalier had a voice singularly
at variance with his delicate fairness. So full was it and
sonorous, that you would have been startled by the sound of it
unless, with certain observers of human nature, you held the
theory that the voice was only what might be expected of such
a nose. With something less of volume than a giant double-
bass, it was a full, pleasant baritone, reminding you of the
hautboy among musical instruments, sweet and resistant, deep
and rich.

M. de Valois had discarded the absurd costume still worn
by a few antiquated Royalists, and frankly modernized his
dress. He always appeared in a maroon coat with gilt but-
tons, loosely-fitting breeches with gold buckles at the knees,
a white sprigged waistcoat, a tight stock, and a collarless
shirt ; this being a last vestige of eighteenth century costume,
which its wearer was the less willing to relinquish because it
enabled him to display a throat not unworthy of a lay abbe.
Square gold buckles of a kind unknown to the present genera-
tion shone conspicuous upon his patent leather shoes. Two
watch chains hung in view in parallel lines from a couple of
fobs, another survival of an eighteenth century mode which
the incroyable did not disdain to copy in the time of the

6 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Directory. This costume of a transition period, reuniting
two centuries, was worn by the Chevalier with the grace of an
old-world marquis, a grace lost to the French stage since
Mole's last pupil, Fleury, retired from the boards and took his
secret with him.

The old bachelor's private life, seemingly open to all eyes,
was in reality inscrutable. He lived in a modest lodging
(to say the least of it) up two pairs of stairs in a house in the
Rue du Cours, his landlady being the laundress most in re-
quest in Alencon — which fact explains the extreme elegance
of the Chevalier's linen. Ill luck was so to order it that
Alengon one day could actually believe that he had
not always conducted himself as befitted a man of his
quality, and that in his old age he privately married one
Cesarine, the mother of an infant which had the impertinence
to come without being called.

"He gave his hand to her who for so long had lent her
hand to iron his linen," said a certain M. du Bousquier.

The sensitive noble's last days were the more vexed by
this unpleasant scandal, because, as shall be shown in the
course of this present Scene, he had already lost a long-
cherished hope for which he had made many a sacrifice.

Mme. Lardot's two rooms were let to M. le Chevalier de
Valois at the moderate rent of a hundred francs per annum.
The worthy gentleman dined out every night, and only came
home to sleep; he was therefore at charges for nothing but
his breakfast, which always consisted of a cup of chocolate
with butter and fruit, according to the season. A fire was
never lighted in his rooms except in the very coldest winters,
and then only while he was dressing. Between the hours of
eleven and four M. de Valois took his walks abroad, read the
ftpera, ;md paid calls.

When the Chevalier first settled in Alencon, he magnani-
mously owned that he had nothing but an annuity of six
hundred livres paid in quarterly instalments by his old man
of business, with whom the certificates were deposited. This
was all that remained of his former wealth. And every three

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 1

months, in fact, a banker in the town paid him a hundred and
fifty francs remitted by one M. Bordin of Paris, the last of
the procureurs du Chatelet. These particulars everybody
knew, for the Chevalier had taken care to ask his confidant
to keep the matter a profound secret. He reaped the
fruits of his misfortunes. A cover was laid for him
in all the best houses in Alencon; he was asked to every
evening party. His talents as a card-player, a teller of
anecdotes, a pleasant and well-bred man of the world, were so
thoroughly appreciated that an evening was spoiled if the
connoisseur of the town was not present. The host and
hostess and all the ladies present missed his little approving
grimace. "You are adorably well dressed," from the old
bachelor's lips, was sweeter to a young woman in a ballroom
than the sight of her rival's despair.

There were certain old-world expressions which no one
could pronounce so well. "My heart," "my jewel," "my little
love," "my queen," and all the dear diminutives of the year
1770 took an irresistible charm from M. de Valois' lips; in
short, the privilege of superlatives was his. His compli-
ments, of which, moreover, he was chary, won him the good-
will of the elderly ladies ; he flattered every one down to the
officials of whom he had no need.

He was so fine a gentleman at the card-table, that his be-
havior would have marked him out anywhere. He never com-
plained; when his opponents lost he praised their play; he
never undertook the education of his partners by showing
them what they ought to have done. If a nauseating discus-
sion of this kind began while the cards were making, the
Chevalier brought out his snuff-box with a gesture worthy of
Mole, looked at the Princess Goritza's portrait, took off the
lid in a stately manner, heaped up a pinch, rubbed
it to a fine powder between finger and thumb, blew off
the light particles, shaped a little cone in his hand,
and by the time the cards were dealt he had replenished
the cavities in his nostrils and replaced the Princess
in his waistcoat pocket — always to the left-hand side.

8 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

None but a noble of the Gracious as distinguished from
the Great Century could have invented such a compromise
between a disdainful silence and an epigram which would
have passed over the heads of his company. The Chevalier
took dull minds as he found them, and knew how to turn
them to account. His irresistible evenness of temper caused
many a one to say, "I admire the Chevalier de Valois!"
Everything about him, his conversation and his manner,
seemed in keeping with his mild appearance. He was care-
ful to come into collision with no one, man or woman. In-
dulgent with deformity as with defects of intellect, he listened
patiently (with the help of the Princess Goritza) to tales of
the little woes of life in a country town; to anecdotes of the
undercooked egg at breakfast, or the sour cream in the coffee ;
to small grotesque details of physical ailments; to tales of
dreams and visitations and wakings with a start. The
Chevalier was an exquisite listener. He had a languishing
glance, a stock attitude to denote compassion; he put in his
"Ohs" and "Poohs" and "What-did-you-dos ?" with charming
appropriateness. Till his dying day no one ever suspected
that while these avalanches of nonsense lasted, the Chevalier
in his own mind was rehearsing the warmest passages of an
old romance, of which the Princess Goritza was the heroine.
Has any one ever given a thought to the social uses of extinct
sentiment ? — or guessed in how many indirect ways love bene-
fits humanity?

Possibly this listener's faculty sufficiently explains the
Chevalier's popularity; he was always the spoiled child of the
town, although he never quitted a drawing-room without
carrying on* about five livres in his pocket. Sometimes he
lost, and he made the most of his losses, but it very seldom
happened. All those who knew him say with one accord that
■ t in any place have they met with so agreeable a mummy,
not even in the Egyptian museum at Turin. Surely in no
known country of the globe did parasite appear in such a
benignant shape. Never did selfishness in its most concen-
d form show itself so inoffensive, so full of good offices

lave h ■' , romi3e

I

hifl manner,
xa.3 care-

of the

.

d wakings wi

he p

IjBlgtitf&ty tow?

of an

hout

^ly in

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 9

as in this gentleman; the Chevalier's egoism was as good as
another man's devoted friendship. If any person went to
ask M. de Valois to do some trifling service which the worthy
Chevalier could not perform without inconvenience, that per-
son never went away without conceiving a great liking for
him, and departed fully convinced that the Chevalier could
do nothing in the matter, or might do harm if he meddled
with it.

To explain this problematical existence the chronicler is
bound to admit, while Truth — that ruthless debauchee — has
caught him by the throat, that latterly after the three sad,
glorious Days of July, Alengon discovered that M. de Valois'
winnings at cards amounted to something like a hundred
and fifty crowns every quarter, which amount the ingenious
Chevalier intrepidly remitted to himself as an annuity, so
that he might not appear to be without resources in a country
with a great turn for practical details. Plenty of his friends
— he was dead by that time, please to remark — plenty of his
friends denied this in toto, they maintained that the stories
were fables and slanders set in circulation by the Liberal
party and that M. de Valois was an honorable and worthy
gentleman. Luckily for clever gamblers, there will always
be champions of this sort for them among the onlookers.
Feeling ashamed to excuse wrongdoing, they stoutly deny
that wrong has been done. Do not accuse them of wrong-
headedness ; they have their own sense of self-respect, and the
Government sets them an example of the virtue which consists
in burying its dead by night without chanting a Te Deum
over a defeat. And suppose that M. de Valois permitted him-
self a neat stratagem that would have won Gramont's esteem,
a smile from Baron de Fceneste, and a shake of the hand
from the Marquis de Moncade, was he any the less the
pleasant dinner guest, the wit, the unvarying card-player,
the charming retailer of anecdotes, the delight of Alengon?
In what, moreover, does the action, lying, as it does, outside
the laws of right and wrong, offend against the elegant code
of a man of birth and breeding ? When so many people are

10 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

obliged to give pensions to others, what more natural than
of one's own accord to allow an annuity to one's own best
friend? But Laius is dead. . . .

After some fifteen years of this kind of life, the Chevalier
had amassed ten thousand and some odd hundred francs.
When the Bourbons returned, he said that an old friend of
his, M. le Marquis de Pombreton, late a lieutenant in the
Black Musketeers, had returned a loan of twelve hundred
pistoles with which he emigrated. The incident made a
sensation. It was quoted afterwards as a set-off against droll
stories in the Constitutionnel of the ways in which some
emigres paid their debts. The poor Chevalier used to blush
all over the right side of his face whenever this noble trait
in the Marquis de Pombreton came up in conversation. At
the time every one rejoiced with M. de Valois; he used to
consult capitalists as to the best way of investing this wreck
of his former fortune ; and, putting faith in the Eestoration,
invested it all in Government stock when the funds had fallen
to fifty-six francs twenty-five centimes. MM. de Lenon-
court, de Navarreins, de Verneuil, de Fontaine, and La Bil-
lardiere, to whom he was known, had obtained a pension of
a hundred crowns for him from the privy purse, he said, and
the Cross of St. Louis. By what means the old Chevalier
obtained the two solemn confirmations of his title and quality,
no one ever knew; but this much is certain, the Cross of
St. Louis gave him brevet rank as a colonel on a retiring pen-
sion, by reason of his services with the Catholic army in the
West.

Besides the fiction of the annuity, to which no one gave
a thought, the Chevalier was now actually possessed of a
genuine income of a thousand francs. But with this im-
provement in his circumstances he made no change in his life
or manners ; only — the red ribbon looked wondrous well on his
maroon coat; it was a finishing touch, as it were, to this
portrait of a gentleman. Ever since the year 1802 the
Chevalier had sealed his letters with an ancient gold seal,
engraved roughly enough, but not so badly but that the Cas-

M«HE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 11

terans, d'Esgrignons, and Troisvilles might see that he bore
the arms of France impaled with his own, to wit, France per
pale, gules two bars gemelles, a cross of five mascles con-
joined or, on a chief sable a cross pattee argent over all;
with a knight's casquet for crest and the motto — Valeo.
With these noble arms the so-called bastard Valois was en-
titled to ride in all the royal coaches in the world.

Plenty of people envied the old bachelor his easy life, made
up of boston, trictrac, reversis, whist, and piquet; of good
play, dinners well digested, pinches of snuff gracefully taken,
and quiet walks abroad. Almost all Alencon thought that
his existence was empty alike of ambitions and cares; but
where is the man whose life is quite as simple as they sup-
pose who envy him?

In the remotest country village you shall find human mol-
lusks, rotifers inanimate to all appearance, which cherish a
passion for lepidoptera or conchology, and are at infinite pains
to acquire some new butterfly, or a specimen of Concha
Veneris. And the Chevalier had not merely shells and but-
terflies of his own, he cherished an ambitious desire with a
pertinacity and profound strategy worthy of a Sixtus V. He
meant to marry a rich old maid ; in all probability because a
wealthy marriage would be a stepping-stone to the high
spheres of the Court. This was the secret of his royal bear-
ing and prolonged abode in Alencon.

Very early one Tuesday morning in the middle of spring
in the year '16 (to use his own expression), the Chevalier
was just slipping on his dressing-gown, an old-fashioned green
silk damask of a flowered pattern, when, in spite of the cotton
in his ears, he heard a girl's light footstep on the stairs.
In another moment some one tapped discreetly three times
on the door, and then, without waiting for an answer, a
very handsome damsel slipped like a snake into the old
bachelor's apartment.

"Ah, Suzanne, is that you?" said the Chevalier de Valois,
continuing to strop his razor. "What are you here for? dear
little jewel of mischief?"

12 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"I have come to tell you something which perhaps will
give you as much pleasure as annoyance."

"Is it something about Cesarine ?"

"Much I trouble myself about your Cesarine," pouted she,
half careless, half in earnest.

The charming Suzanne, whose escapade was to exercise
so great an influence on the lives of all the principal charac-
ters in this story, was one of Mme. Lardot's laundry girls. And
now for a few topographical details.

The whole ground floor of the house was given up to the
laundry. The little yard was a drying-ground where em-
broidered handkerchiefs, collarettes, muslin slips, cuffs, frilled
shirts, cravats, laces, embroidered petticoats, all the fine wash-
ing of the best houses in the town, in short, hung out along
the lines of hair rope. The Chevalier used to say that he was
kept informed of the progress of the receiver-general's wife's
flirtations by the number of slips thus brought to light ; and
the amount of frilled shirts and cambric cravats varied
directly with the petticoats and collarettes. By this system
of double entry, as it were, he detected all the assignations
in the town; but the Chevalier was always discreet, he never
let fall an epigram that might have closed a house to him.
And yet he was a witty talker ! For which reason you may be
sure that M. de Valois' manners were of the finest, while
his talents, as so often happens, were thrown away upon a
narrow circle. Still, for he was only human after all, he
sometimes could not resist the pleasure of a searching side
glance which made women tremble, and nevertheless they
liked him when they found out how profoundly discreet he
was, how full of sympathy for their pretty frailties.

Mme. Lardot's forewoman and factotum, an alarmingly
ugly spinster of five-and-forty, occupied the rest of the second
floor with the Chevalier. Her door on the landing was
exactly opposite his; and her apartment, like his own, con-
sisted of two rooms, looking respectively upon the street and
vard. Above, there was nothing but the attics where
linen was dried in winter. Below lodged Mme. Lardot's

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 13

grandfather. The old man, Grevin by name, had been a
privateer in his time, and had served under Admiral Simeuse
in the Indies; now he was paralyzed and stone deaf. Mme.
Lardot herself occupied the rooms beneath her forewoman,
and so great was her weakness for people of condition, that
she might be said to be blind where the Chevalier was con-
cerned. In her eyes, M. de Valois was an absolute monarch, a
king that could do no wrong; even if one of her own work-girls
had been said to be guilty of finding favor in his sight, she
would have said, "He is so amiable !"

And so, if M. de Valois, like most people in the provinces,
lived in a glass house, it was secret as a robber's cave so far as
he at least was concerned. A born confidant of the little
intrigues of the laundry, he never passed the door — which al-
most always stood ajar — without bringing something for his
pets — chocolate, bonbons, ribbons, laces, a gilt cross, and the
jokes that grisettes love. Wherefore the little girls adored the
Chevalier. Women can tell by instinct whether a man is
attracted to anything that wears a petticoat; they know at
once the kind of man who enjoys the mere sense of their
presence, who never thinks of making blundering demands
of repayment for his gallantry. In this respect womankind
has a canine faculty; a dog in any company goes straight
to the man who respects animals. The Chevalier de Valois in
his poverty preserved something of his former life; he was
as unable to live without some fair one under his protection
as any grand seigneur of a bygone age. He clung to the
traditions of the petite maison. He loved to give to women,
and women alone can receive gracefully, perhaps because it is
always in their power to repay.

In these days, when every lad on leaving school tries his
hand at unearthing symbols or sifting legends, is it not ex-
traordinary that no one has explained that portent, the
Courtesan of the Eighteenth Century ? What was she but the
tournament of the Sixteenth in another shape? In 1550 the
knights displayed their prowess for their ladies; in 1750 they
displayed their mistresses at Longchamps; to-day they run

14 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

their horses over the course. The noble of every age has
done his best to invent a life which he, and he only, can live.
The painted shoes of the Fourteenth Century are the talons
rouges of the Eighteenth; the parade of a mistress was one
fashion in ostentation; the sentiment of chivalry and the
knight errant was another.

The Chevalier de Valois could no longer ruin himself for
a mistress, so for bonbons wrapped in bank-bills he politely
offered a bag of genuine cracknels ; and to the credit of Alen-
gon, be it said, the cracknels caused far more pleasure to the
recipients than M. d'Artois' presents of carriages or silver-
gilt toilet sets ever gave to the fair Duthe. There was not a
girl in the laundry but recognized the Chevalier's fallen great-
ness, and kept his familiarities in the house a profound
secret.

In answer to questions, they always spoke gravely of the
Chevalier de Valois; they watched over him. For others he
became a venerable gentleman, his life was a flower of
sanctity. But at home they would have lighted on his
shoulders like paroquets.

The Chevalier liked to know the intimate aspects of family
life which laundresses learn; they used to go up to his room
of a morning to retail the gossip of the town ; he called them
his "gazettes in petticoats," his "living feuilletons." M.
Sartine himself had not such intelligent spies at so cheap a
rate, nor yet so loyal in their rascality. Eemark, moreover,
that the Chevalier thoroughly enjoyed his breakfasts.

Suzanne was one of his favorites. A clever and ambitious
girl with the stuff of a Sophie Arnould in her, she was be-
sides as beautiful as the loveliest courtesan that Titian ever
prayed to pose against a background of dark velvet as a model
.for his Venus. Her forehead and all the upper part of her
face about the eyes were delicately moulded ; but the contours
of the lower half were cast in a commoner mould. Hers
was the beauty of a Normande, fresh, plump, and brilliant-
complexioned, with that Rubens fleshiness which should be
combined with the muscular development of a Farnese Her-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 15

cules : This was no Venus 6V Medici, the graceful feminine
counterpart of Apollo.

"Well, child," said the Chevalier, "tell me your adventures
little or big."

The Chevalier's fatherly benignity with these grisettes
would have marked him out anywhere between Paris and
Pekin. The girls put him in mind of the courtesans of an-
other age, of the illustrious queens of opera of European
fame during a good third of the eighteenth century. Certain
it is that he who had lived for so long in a world of women
now as dead and forgotten as the Jesuits, the buccaneers, the
abbes, and the farmers-general, and all great things generally
— certain it is that the Chevalier had acquired an irresistible
good humor, a gracious ease, an unconcern, with no trace of
egoism discernible in it. So might Jupiter have appeared
to Alcmena — a king that chooses to be a woman's dupe, and
flings majesty and its thunderbolts to the winds, that he may
squander Olympus in follies, and "little suppers," and
feminine extravagance; wishful, of all things, to be far
enough away from Juno.

The room in which the Chevalier received company was
bare enough, with its shabby bit of tapestry to do duty as a
carpet, and very dirty, old-fashioned easy-chairs; the walls
were covered with a cheap paper, on which the countenances of
Louis XVI. and his family, framed in weeping willow, appear-
ed at intervals among funeral urns, bearing the sublime testa-
ment by way of inscription, amid a whole host of sentimental
emblems invented by Royalism under the Terror ; but in spite
of all this, in spite of the old flowered green silk dressing-
gown, in spite of its owner's air of dilapidation, a certain
fragrance of the eighteenth century clung about the Chevalier
de Valois as he shaved himself before the old-fashioned toilet
glass, covered with cheap lace. All the graceless graces of his
youth seemed to reappear ; he might have had three hundred
thousand francs' worth of debts to his name, and a chariot at
his door. He looked a great man, great as Berthier in the
Retreat from Moscow issuing the order of the day to bat-
talions which were no more.
vol. 7—24

16 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"M. le Chevalier/' Suzanna replied archly, "it seems to me
that I have nothing to tell you— you have only to look !"

So saying, she turned and stood sidewise to prove her words
by ocular demonstrations; and the Chevalier, deep old gentle-
man, still holding his razor across his chin, cast his right eye
downwards upon the damsel, and pretended to understand.

"Very good, my little pet, we will have a little talk to-
gether presently. But you come first, it seems, to me."

"But, M. le Chevalier, am I to wait till my mother beats
me and Mme. Lardot turns me away ? If I do not go to Paris
at once, I shall never get married here, where the men are so
ridiculous."

"These things cannot be helped, child ! Society changes,
and women suffer just as much as the nobles from the shock-
ing confusion which ensues. Topsy-turvydom in politics
ends in topsy-turvy manners. Alas ! woman soon will cease
to be woman" (here he took the cotton wool out of his ears to
continue his toilet). "Women will lose a great deal by
plunging into sentiment ; they will torture their nerves, and
there will be an end of the good old ways of our time, when a
little pleasure was desired without blushes, and accepted
without more ado, and the vapors" (he polished the earrings
with the negroes' heads) — "the vapors were only known as
a means of getting one's way ; before long they will take the
proportions of a complaint only to be cured by an infusion
of orange-blossoms." (The Chevalier burst out laughing.)
"Marriage, in short," he resumed, taking a pair of tweezers to
pluck out a gray hair, "marriage will come to be a very dull
institution indeed, and it was so joyous in my time. The
reign of Louis Quatorze and Louis Quinze, bear this in mind,
my child, saw the last of the finest manners in the
.world."

"But, M. le Chevalier," urged the girl, "it is your little
Suzanne's character and reputation that is at stake, and you
are not going to forsake her, I hope !"

"What is all this?" cried the Chevalier, with a finishing
touch to his hair; "I would sooner lose my name!"

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 17

"Ah!" said Suzanne.

"Listen to me, little masquerader." He sat down in a large,
low chair, a duchess, as it used to be called, which Mme. Lar-
dot had picked up somewhere for her lodger. Then he drew
the magnificent Suzanne to him till she stood between his
knees; and Suzanne submitted — Suzanne who held her head
so high in the streets, and had refused a score of overtures
from admirers in Alengon, not so much from self-respect as
in disdain of their pettiness. Suzanne so brazenly made the
most of the supposed consequences of her errors, that the old
sinner, who had fathomed so many mysteries in persons far
more astute than Suzanne, saw the real state of affairs at
once. He knew well enough that a grisette does not laugh
when disgrace is really in question, but he scorned to throw
down the scaffolding of an engaging fib with a touch.

"We are slandering ourselves," said he, and there was an
inimitable subtlety in his smile. "We are as well conducted
as the fair one whose name we bear; we can marry without
fear. But we do not want to vegetate here; we long for
Paris, where charming creatures can be rich if they are clever,
and we are not a fool. So we should like to find out whether
the City of Pleasure has young Chevaliers de Valois in store
for us, and a carriage and diamonds and an opera box. There
are Russians and English and Austrians that are bringing
millions to spend in Paris, and some of that money mamma
settled on us as a marriage portion when she gave us our
good looks. And besides, we are patriotic ; we should like to
help France to find her own money in these gentlemen's
pockets. Eh ! eh ! my dear little devil's lamb, all this is not
bad. The neighbors will cry out upon you a little at first
perhaps, but success will make everything right. The real
crime, my child, is poverty ; and you and I both suffer for it.
As we are not lacking in intelligence, we thought we might
turn our dear little reputation to account to take in
an old bachelor, but the old bachelor, sweetheart, knows the
alpha and omega of woman's wiles ; which is to say, that you
would find it easier to put a grain of salt upon a sparrow's

18 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

tail than to persuade me to believe that I have had any share
in your affair.

"Go to Paris, my child, go at the expense of a bachelor's
vanity; I am not going to hinder you, I will help you, for
the old bachelor, Suzanne, is the cash-box provided by nature
for a young girl. But do not thrust me into the affair.
Now, listen, my queen, understanding life so well as you do —
you see, you might do me a good deal of harm and give me
trouble; harm, because you might spoil my marriage in a
place where people are so particular ; trouble on your account,
because you will get yourself in a scrape for nothing, a scrape
entirely of your own invention, sly girl; and you know, my
pet, that I have no money left, I am as poor as a church
mouse. Ah ! if I were to marry Mile. Cormon, if I were rich
again, I would certainly rather have you than Cesarine. You
were always fine gold enough to gild lead, it seemed to me;
you were made to be a great lord's love; and as I knew you
were a clever girl, I am not at all surprised by this trick of
yours, I expected as much. For a girl, this means that you
burn your boats. It is no common mind, my angel, that can
do it; and for that reason you have my esteem," and he be-
stowed confirmation upon her cheek after the manner of a
bishop, with two fingers.

"But, M. le Chevalier, I do assure you that you are mis-
taken, and " she blushed, and dared not finish her sen-
tence, at a glance he had seen through her, and read her
plans from beginning to end.

"Yes, I understand, you wish me to believe you. Very
well, I believe. But take my advice and go to M. du
Bousquier. You have taken M. du Bousquier's linen home
from the wash for five or six months, have you not? — Very
good. I do not ask to know what has happened between
you ; but I know him, he is vain, he is an old bachelor, he is
very rich, he has an income of two thousand five hundred
lime, and spends less than eight hundred. If you are the
clever girl that I take you for, you will find your way to Paris
at his expense. Go to him, my pet, twist him round your

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 19

fingers, and of all things, be supple as silk, and make a
double twist and a knot at every word; he is just the man
to be afraid of a scandal ; and if he knows that you can make
him sit on the stool of repentance In short, you under-
stand, threaten to apply to the ladies of the charitable fund.
He is ambitious besides. Well and good, with a wife to help
him there should be nothing beyond a man's reach; and are
you not handsome enough and clever enough to make your
husband's fortune? Why, plague take it, you might hold
your own with a court lady."

The Chevalier's last words let the light into Suzanne's
brain; she was burning with impatience to rush off to du
Bousquier ; but as she could not hurry away too abruptly, she
helped the Chevalier to dress, asking questions about Paris as
she did so. As for the Chevalier, he saw that his remarks
had taken effect, and gave Suzanne an excuse to go, asking
her to tell Cesarine to bring up the chocolate that Mme. Lar-
dot made for him every morning, and Suzanne forthwith
slipped off in search of her prey.

And here follows du Bousquier's biography. — He came of
an old Alengon family in a middle rank between the burghers
and the country squires. On the death of his father, a
magistrate in the criminal court, he was left without resource,
and, like most ruined provincials, betook himself to Paris to
seek his fortune. When the Revolution broke out, du
Bousquier was a man of affairs; and in those days (in spite
of the Republicans, who are all up in arms for the honesty
of their government, the word "affairs" was used very loosely.
Political spies, jobbers, and contractors, the men who ar-
ranged with the syndics of communes for the sale of the
property of emigres, and then bought up land at low prices
to sell again, — all these folk, like ministers and generals,
were men of affairs.

From 1793 to 1799 du Bousquier held contracts to supply
the army with forage and provisions. During those years he
lived in a splendid mansion; he was one of the great
capitalists of the time; he went shares with Ouvrard; kepi

20 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

open house and led the scandalous life of the times. A
Cincinnatus, reaping where he had not sowed, and rich with
stolen rations and sacks of corn, he kept petites maisons and
a bevy of mistresses, and gave fine entertainments to the
directors of the Kepublic. Citizen du Bousquier was one of
Barms' intimates ; he was on the best of terms with Fouche,
an<l hand and glove with Bernadotte. He thought to be a
Minister of State one day, and threw himself heart and soul
into the party that secretly plotted against Bonaparte before
the battle of Marengo. And but for Kellermann's charge
and the death of Desaix, du Bousquier would have played a
great part in the state. He was one of the upper members
of the permanent staff of the promiscuous government which
was driven by Napoleon's luck to vanish into the side-scenes
of 1793.*

The victory unexpectedly won by stubborn fighting ended
in the downfall of this party; they had placards ready
printed, and were only waiting for the First Consul's defeat
to proclaim a return to the principles of the Mountain.

Du Bousquier, feeling convinced that a victory was im-
possible, had two special messengers on the battlefield, and
speculated with the larger part of his fortune for a fall in
the funds. The first courier came with the news that Melas
was victorious; but the second arriving four hours afterwards,
at night, brought the tidings of the Austrian defeat. Du
Bousquier cursed Kellermann and Desaix; the First Consul
owed him millions, he dared not curse him. But between the
chance of making millions on the one hand, and stark ruin
on the other, he lost his head. For several days he was half
idiotic; he had undermined his constitution with excesses
to such an extent that the thunderbolt left him helpless.
He had something to hope from the settlement of his claims
upon the Government ; but in spite of bribes, he was made to
feel the weight of Napoleon's displeasure against army con-
tractors who speculated on his defeat. M. de Fermon, so
pleasantly nicknamed "Fermons la caisse" left du Bousquier

* See U)ie T&tiibrense Affaire.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 2i

without a penny. The First Consul was even more incensed
by the immorality of his private life and his connection with
Barras and Bernadotte than by his speculations on the
Bourse; he erased M. du Bousquier's name from the list of
Receivers-general, on which a last remnant of credit had
placed him for Alencon.

Of all his former wealth, nothing now remained to du
Bousquier save an income of twelve hundred francs from the
funds, an investment entirely due to chance, which saved him
from actual want. His creditors, knowing nothing of the re-
sults of his liquidation, only left him enough in consols to
bring in a thousand francs per annum ; but their claims were
paid in full after all, when the outstanding debts had been col-
lected, and the Hotel de Beauseant, du Bousquier's town
house, sold besides. So, after a close shave of bankruptcy, the
sometime speculator emerged with his name intact. Preceded
by a tremendous reputation due to his relations with former
heads of government departments, his manner of life, his brief
day of authority, and final ruin through the First Consul, the
man interested the city of Alengon, where Koyalism was
secretly predominant. Du Bousquier, exasperated against
Bonaparte, with his tales of the First Consul's pettiness, of
Josephine's lax morals, and a whole store of anecdotes of ten
years of Eevolution, seen from within, met with a good re-
ception.

It was about this period of his life that du Bousquier, now
well over his fortieth year, came out as a bachelor of thirty-
six. He was of medium height, fat as became a contractor,
and willing to display a pair of calves that would have done
credit to a gay and gallant attorney. He had strongly
marked features; a flattened nose with tufts of hair in the
equine nostrils, bushy black brows, and eyes beneath them
that looked out shrewd as M. de Talleyrand's own, though
they had lost something of their brightness. He wore his
brown hair very long, and retained the side-whiskers
{nageoires, as they were called) of the time of the Republic.
You had only to look at his fingers, tufted at every joint, or at

a
11-

re

22 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

the blue knotted veins that stood out upon his hands, to see
the unmistakable signs of a very remarkable muscular de-
velopment; and, in truth, he had the chest of the Farnese
Hercules, and shoulders fit to bear the burden of the national
debt; you never see such shoulders nowadays. His was a
luxuriant virility admirably described by an eighteenth cen-
tury phrase which is scarcely intelligible to-day; the gal-
lantry of a bygone age would have summed up du Bousqui
as a "payer of arrears" — un vrai payeur d'arrerages.

Yet, as in the case of the Chevalier de Yalois, there were
sundry indications at variance with the ex-contractor's general
appearance. His vocal powers, for instance, were not in
keeping with his muscles ; not that it was the mere thread of
a voice which sometimes issues from the throats of such two-
footed seals; on the contrary, it was loud but husky, some-
thing like the sound of a saw cutting through damp, soft
wood; it was, in fact, the voice of a speculator brought to
grief. For a long while du Bousquier wore the costume in
vogue in the days of his glory: the boots with turned-down
tops, the while silk stockings, the short cloth breeches, ribbed
with cinnamon color, the blue coat, the waistcoat a la
Robespierre.

His hatred of the First Consul should have been a sort
of passport into the best Royalist houses of Alengon ; but the
seven or eight families that made up the local Faubourg
Saint-Germain into which the Chevalier de Valois had the
entrance, held aloof. Almost from the first, du Bousquier
had aspired to marry one Mile. Armande, whose brother was
one of the most esteemed nobles of the town; he thought to
make this brother play a great part in his own schemes,
for he was dreaming of a brilliant return match in politics.
He met with a refusal, for which he consoled himself with
such compensation as he might find among some half-score of
retired manufacturers of Point a" Alengon, owners of grass
lands or cattle, or wholesale linen merchants, thinking
that among these chance might put a good match in his way.
Indeed, the old bachelor had centered all his hopes on a pros-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 23

pective fortunate marriage, which a man, eligible in so many-
ways, might fairly expect to make. For he was not without
a certain financial acumen, of which not a few availed them-
selves. He pointed out business speculations as a ruined
gambler gives hints to new hands ; and he was expert at dis-
covering the resources, chances, and management of a con-
cern. People looked upon him as a good administrator. It
was an often-discussed question whether he should not be
mayor of Alencon, but the recollection of his Republican
jobberies spoiled his chances, and he was never received at
the prefecture.

Every successive government, even the government of the
Hundred Days, declined to give him the coveted appoint-
ment, which would have assured his marriage with an elderly
spinster whom he now had in his mind. It was his detestation
of the Imperial Government that drove him into the Royalist
camp, where he stayed in spite of insults there received; but
when the Bourbons returned, and still he was excluded from
the prefecture, that final rebuff filled him with a hatred deep
as the profound secrecy in which he wrapped it. Outwardly,
he remained patiently faithful to his opinions; secretly, he
became the leader of the Liberal party in Alencon, the in-
visible controller of elections; and, by his cunningly devised
manoeuvres and underhand methods, he worked no little harm
to the restored Monarchy.

When a man is reduced to live through his intellect alone,
his hatred is something as quiet as a little stream; in-
significant to all appearance, but unfailing. This was the
case with du Bousquier. His hatred was like a negro's, so
placid, so patient, that it deceives the enemy. For fifteen
years he brooded over a revenge which no victory, not even the
Three Days of July 1830, could sate.

When the Chevalier sent Suzanne to du Bousquier, he had
his own reasons for so doing. The Liberal and the Royalist
divined each other, in spite of the skilful dissimulation which
hid their common aim from the rest of the town.

The two old bachelors were rivals. Both of them had

t I THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

planned to marry the Demoiselle Cormon, whose name came
up in the course of the Chevalier's conversation with Suzanne.
Both of them, engrossed by their idea, and masquerading in
indifference, were waiting for the moment when some chance
should deliver the old maid to one or other of them.
And the fact that they were rivals in this way would have
been enough to make enemies of the pair even if each had not
been the living embodiment of a political system.

Men take their color from their time. This pair of rivals
is a case in point ; the historic tinge of their characters stood
out in strong contrast in their talk, their ideas, their costume.
The one, blunt and energetic, with his burly abrupt ways, curt
speech, dark looks, dark hair, and dark complexion, alarming
in appearance, but impotent in reality as insurrection, was
the Republic personified; the other, bland and polished,
elegant and fastidious, gaining his ends slowly but surely by
diplomacy, and never unmindful of good taste, was the typical
old-world courtier. They met on the same ground almost
every evening. It was a rivalry always courteous and urbane
on the part of the Chevalier, less ceremonious on du Bous-
quier's, though he kept within the limits prescribed by Alen-
gon, for he had no wish to be driven ignominiously from the
field. The two men understood each other well ; but no one else
saw what was going on. In spite of the minute and curious
interest which provincials take in the small details of which
their lives are made up, no one so much as suspected that the
two men were rivals.

M. le Chevalier's position was somewhat the stronger; he
had never proposed for Mile. Cormon, whereas du Bousquier
had declared himself after a rebuff from one of the noblest
families, and had met with a second refusal. Still, the
Chevalier thought so well of his rival's chances, that he con-
sidered it worth while to deal him a coup de Jarnac, a
treacherous thrust from a weapon as finely tempered as
Suzanne. He had fathomed du Bousquier; and, as will
shortly be seen, he was not mistaken in any of his con-
jectures.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 25

Suzanne tripped away down the Rue du Cours, along thb
Rue de la Porte de Seez and the Rue du Bercail to the Rue
du Cygne, where du Bousquier, five years ago, had bought a
small countrified house built of the gray stone of the dis-
trict, which is used like granite in Normandy, or Breton schist
in the West. The sometime forage-contractor had established
himself there in more comfort than any other house in the
town could boast, for he had brought with him some relics
of past days of splendor ; but provincial manners and customs
were slowly darkening the glory of the fallen Sardanapalus.
The vestiges of past luxury looked about as much out of place
in the house as a chandelier in a barn. Harmony, which
links the works of man or of God together, was lacking in all
things large or small. A ewer with a metal lid, such as you
only see on the outskirts of Brittany, stood on a handsome
chest of drawers; and while the bedroom floor was covered
with a fine carpet, the window-curtains displayed a flower
pattern only known to cheap printed cottons. The stone
mantelpiece, daubed over with paint, was out of all keeping
with a handsome clock disgraced by a shabby pair of candle-
sticks. Local talent had made an unsuccessful attempt to
paint the doors in vivid contrasts of startling colors; while
the staircase, ascended by all and sundry in muddy boots, had
not been painted at all. In short, du Bousquier's house,
like the time which he represented, was a confused mixture of
grandeur and squalor.

Du Bousquier was regarded as well-to-do, but he led the
parasitical life of the Chevalier de Valois, and he is always
rich enough that spends less than his income. His one serv-
ant was a country bumpkin, a dull-witted youth enough ; but
he had been trained, by slow degrees, to suit du Bousquier's
requirements, until he had learned, much as an ourang-outang
might learn, to scour floors, black boots, brush clothes, and to
come for his master of anevening with a lantern if it was dark,
and a pair of sabots if it rained. On great occasions, du
Bousquier made him discard the blue-checked cotton blouse
with loose sagging pockets behind, which always bulged with

20 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

a handkerchief, a clasp knife, apples, or "stickjaw." Ar-
rayed in a regulation suit of clothes, he accompanied his
master to wait at table, and over-ate himself afterwards with
the other servants. Like many other mortals, Bene had only
stuff enough in him for one vice, and his was gluttony. Du
Bousquier made a reward of this service, and in return his
Breton factotum was absolutely discreet.

"What, have you come our way, miss?" Eene asked when
he saw Suzanne in the doorway. "It is not your day ; we have
not got any linen for Mme. Lardot."

"Big stupid!" laughed the fair Suzanne, as she went up
the stairs, leaving Eene to finish a porringer full of buck-
wheat bannocks boiled in milk.

Du Bousquier was still in bed, ruminating his plans for
fortune. To him, as to all who have squeezed the orange of
pleasure, there was nothing left but ambition. Ambition,
like gambling, is inexhaustible. And, moreover, given a good
constitution, the passions of the brain will always outlive
the heart's passions.

"Here I am !" said Suzanne, sitting down on the bed ; the
curtain-rings grated along the rods as she swept them sharply
back with an imperious gesture.

"Quesaco, my charmer?" asked du Bousquier, sitting up-
right.

"Monsieur," Suzanne began, with much gravity, "you must
be surprised to see me come in this way; but, under the cir-
cumstances, it is no use my minding what people will say."

"What is all this about?" asked du Bousquier, folding his
arms.

"Why, do you not understand?" returned Suzanne. "I
know" (with an engaging little pout), "I know how ridiculous
it is when a poor girl comes to bother a man about things that
you think mere trifles. But if you really knew me, monsieur,
if you only knew all that I would do for a man, if he cared
about me as I could care about you, you would never repent
of marrying me. It is not that I could be of so much use to
you here, by the way ; but if we went to Paris, you should see

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 27

how far I could bring a man of spirit with such brains as
yours, and especially just now, when they are re-making the
Government from top to bottom, and the foreigners are the
masters. Between ourselves, does this thing in question really
matter after all ? Is it not a piece of good fortune for which
you would be glad to pay a good deal one of these days?
For whom are you going to think and work ?"

"For myself, to be sure !" du Bousquier answered brutally.

"Old monster ! you shall never be a father !" said Suzanne,
with a ring in her voice which turned the words to a prophecy
and a curse.

"Come, Suzanne, no nonsense; I am dreaming still, I
think."

"What more do you want in the way of reality?" cried
Suzanne, rising to her feet. Du Bousquier scrubbed his head
with his cotton nightcap, which he twisted round and round
with a fidgety energy that told plainly of prodigious mental
ferment.

"He actually believes it!" Suzanne said within herself.
"And his vanity is tickled. Good Lord, how easy it is to take
them in!"

"Suzanne ! What the deuce do you want me to do ? It

is so extraordinary ... I that thought The fact

is. . . . But no, no, it can't be "

"Do you mean that you cannot marry me ?"

"Oh, as to that, no. I am not free."

"Is it Mile. Armande or Mile. Cormon, who have both
refused you already ? Look here, M. du Bousquier, it is not
as if I was obliged to get gendarmes to drag you to the
registrar's office to save my character. There are plenty that
would marry me, but I have no intention whatever of taking
a man that does not know my value. You may be sorry some
of these days that you behaved like this; for if you will not
take your chance to-day, not for gold, nor silver, nor any-
thing in this world will I give it you again."

"But, Suzanne — are you sure ?"

"Sir, for what do you take me?" asked the girl, draping

28 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

herself in her virtue. "I am not going to put you in mind of
the promises you made, promises that have been the ruin of a
poor girl, when all her fault was that she looked too high
and loved too much."

But joy, suspicion, self-interest, and a host of contending
emotions had taken possession of du Bousquier. For a long
time past he had made up his mind that he would marry Mile.
Cormon; for after long ruminations over the Charter, he
saw that it opened up magnificent prospects to his ambition
through the channels of a representative government. His
marriage with that mature spinster would raise his social
position very much; he would acquire great influence in
Alengon. And here this wily Suzanne had conjured up a
storm, which put him in a most awkward dilemma. But for
that private hope of his, he would have married Suzanne out
of hand, and put himself openly at the head of the Liberal
party in the town. Such a marriage meant the final re-
nunciation of the best society, and a drop into the ranks of the
wealthy tradesmen, shopkeepers, rich manufacturers, and
graziers who, beyond a doubt, would carry him as their can-
didate in triumph. Already du Bousquier caught a glimpse
of the Opposition benches. He did not attempt to hide his
solemn deliberations ; he rubbed his hand over his head, made
a wisp of the cotton nightcap, and a damaging confession of
the nudity beneath it. As for Suzanne, after the wont of
those who succeed beyond their utmost hopes, she sat dum-
founded. To hide her amazement at his behavior, she drooped
like a hapless victim before her seducer, while within herself
she laughed like a grisette on a frolic.

"My dear child, I will have nothing to do with hanky-
panky of this sort/'

This brief formula was the result of his cogitations. The
ex-contractor to the Government prided himself upon belong-
ing to that particular school of cynic philosophers which
declines to be "taken in" by women, and includes the whole
sex in one category as suspicious characters. Strong-minded.
men of this stamp, weaklings are they for the most part, have

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 29

a catechism of their own in the matter of womankind. Every
woman, according to them, from the Queen of France to the
milliner, is at heart a rake, a hussy, a dangerous creature, not
to say a bit of a rascal, a liar in grain, a being incapable of a
serious thought. For du Bousquier and his like, woman is a
maleficent bayadere that must be left to dance, and sing, and
laugh. They see nothing holy, nothing great in woman ; for
them she represents, not the poetry of the senses, but gross
sensuality. They are like gluttons who should mistake the
kitchen for the dining-room. On this showing, a man must
be a consistent tyrant, unless he means to be enslaved. And
in this respect, again, du Bousquier and the Chevalier de
Valois stood at opposite poles.

As he delivered himself of the above remark, he flung his
nightcap to the foot of the bed, much as Gregory the Great
might have flung down the candle while he launched the
thunders of an excommunication; and Suzanne learned that
the old bachelor wore a false front.

"Bear in mind, M. du Bousquier, that by coming here I
have done my duty," she remarked majestically. "Remember
that I was bound to offer you my hand and to ask for yours ;
but, at the same time, remember that I have behaved with the
dignity of a self-respecting woman; I did not lower myself so
far as to cry like a fool ; I did not insist ; I have not worried
you at all. Now you know my position. You know that I
cannot stay in Alengon. If I do, my mother will beat me;
and Mme. Lardot is as high and mighty over principles as
if she washed and ironed with them. She will turn me away.
And where am I to go, poor work-girl that I am? To the
hospital ? Am I to beg for bread ? Not I. I would sooner
fling myself into the Brillante or the Sarthe. Now, would it
not be simpler for me to go to Paris? Mother might find
some excuse for sending me, an uncle wants me to come, or
an aunt is going to die, or some lady takes an interest in me.
It is just a question of money for the traveling expenses and
— you know what "

This news was immeasurably more important to du Bous-

30 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

quier than to the Chevalier de Valois, for reasons which no
one knew as yet but the two rivals, though they will appear in
the course of the story. At this point, suffice it to say that
Suzanne's fib had thrown the sometime forage-contractor's
ideas into such confusion that he was incapable of thinking
seriously. But for that bewilderment, but for the secret joy
in his heart (for a man's own vanity is a swindler that never
lacks a dupe), it must have struck him that any honest girl,
with a heart still unspoiled, would have died a hundred deaths
rather than enter upon such a discussion, or make a demand
for money. He must have seen the look in the girl's eyes,
seen the gambler's ruthless meanness that would take a life to
gain money for a stake.

"Would you really go to Paris?" he asked.

The words brought a twinkle to Suzanne's gray eyes, but it
was lost upon du Bousquier's self-satisfaction.

"I would indeed, sir/'

But at this du Bousquier broke out into a singular lament.
He had just paid the balance of the purchase-money for his
house; and there was the painter, and the glazier, and the
bricklayer, and the carpenter. Suzanne let him talk; she
was waiting for the figures. Du Bousquier at last proposed
three hundred francs, and at this Suzanne got up as if to
go-

"Eh, what! Where are you going?" du Bousquier cried
uneasily. — "A fine thing to be a bachelor," he said to himself.
"I'll be hanged if I remember doing more than rumple the
girl's collar ; and hey presto ! on the strength of a joke she
takes upon herself to draw a bill upon you, point-blank !"

Suzanne meanwhile began to cry. "Monsieur," she said,
"I am going to Mme. Granson, the treasurer of the Maternity
Fund; she pulled one poor girl in the same straits out of
the water (as you may say) to my knowledge."

"Mme. Granson?"

"Yes. She is related to Mile. Cormon, the lady patroness
of the society. Asking your pardon, some ladies in the town
have started a society that will keep many a poor creature

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 31

from making away with her child, like that pretty Faustine
of Argentan did; and paid for it with her life at Mortagne
just three years ago."

"Here, Suzanne/' returned du Bousquier, holding out a
key, "open the desk yourself. There is a bag that has been
opened, with six hundred francs still left in it. It is all I
have."

Du Bousquier's chopfallen expression plainly showed how
little goodwill went with his compliance.

"An old thief!" said Suzanne to herself. "I will tell
tales about his false hair !" Mentally she compared him with
that delightful old Chevalier de Valois; he had given her
nothing, but he understood her, he had advised her, he had
the welfare of his grisettes at heart.

"If you are deceiving me, Suzanne," exclaimed the object
of this unflattering comparison, as he watched her hand in
the drawer, "you shall "

"So, monsieur, you would not give me the money if I
asked you for it?" interrupted she with queenly insolence.

Once recalled to the ground of gallantry, recollections of
his prime came back to the ex-contractor. He grunted as-
sent. Suzanne took the bag and departed, first submitting
her forehead to a kiss which he gave, but in a manner which
seemed to say, "This is an expensive privilege; but it is
better than being brow-beaten by counsel in a court of law
as the seducer of a young woman accused of child murder."

Suzanne slipped the bag into a pouch-shaped basket on her

arm, execrating du Bousquier's stinginess as she did so, for

she wanted a thousand francs. If a girl is once possessed

by a desire, and has taken the first step in trickery and deceit,

she will go to great lengths. As the fair clear-starcher took

her way along the Eue du Bercail, it suddenly occurred to

her that the Maternity Fund under Mile. Cormon's presidency

would probably make up the sum which she regarded as

sufficient for a start, a very large amount in the eyes of an

Alencon grisette. And besides, she hated du Bousquier, and

du Bousquier seemed frightened when she talked of confess-
vol. 7—25

32 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

ing her so-called strait to Mme. Granson. Wherefore
Suzanne determined that whether or no she made a farthing
out of the Maternity Fund, she would entangle du Bousquier
in the inextricable undergrowth of the gossip of a country
town. There is something of a monkey's love of mischief in
every grisette. Suzanne composed her countenance dolorously
and betook herself accordingly to Mme. Granson.

Mme. Granson was the widow of a lieutenant-colonel of
artillery who fell at Jena. Her whole yearly income con-
sisted of a pension of nine hundred francs for her lifetime,
and her one possession besides was a son whose education and
maintenance had absorbed every penny of her savings. She
lived in the Eue du Bercail, in one of the cheerless ground-
floor apartments through which you can see from back to
front at a glance as you walk down the main street of any little
town. Three steps, rising pyramid fashion, brought you to
the level of the house door, which opened upon a passage-way
and a little yard beyond, with a wooden-roofed staircase at
the further end. Mme. Granson's kitchen and dining-room
occupied the space on one side of the passage, on the other
side a single room did duty for a variety of purposes, for
the widow's bedroom among others. Her son, a young man
of three-and-twenty, slept upstairs in an attic above the first
floor. Athanase Granson contributed six hundred francs to
the poor mother's housekeeping. He was distantly related
to Mile. Cormon, whose influence had obtained him a little
post in the registrar's office, where he was employed in making
out certificates of births, marriages, and deaths.

After this, any one can see the little chilly yellow-curtained
parlor, the furniture covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, and
Mme. Granson going round the room, after her visitors had
left, to straighten the little straw mats put down in front of
each chair, so as to save the waxed and polished red brick
floor from contact with dirty boots; and, this being accom-
plished, returning to her place beside her work-table under
the portrait of her lieutenant-general. The becushioned
armchair, in which she sat at her sewing, was always drawn

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 3.°,

up between the two windows, so that she could look up and
down the Eue du Bercail and see every one that passed. She
was a good sort of woman, dressed with a homely simplicity
in keeping with a pale face, beaten thin, as it were, by many
cares. You felt the stern soberness of poverty in every little
detail in that house, just as you breathed a moral atmosphere
of austerity and upright provincial ways.

Mother and son at this moment were sitting together in the
dining-room over their breakfast — a cup of coffee, bread and
butter and radishes. And here, if the reader is to under-
stand how gladly Mme. Granson heard Suzanne, some ex-
planation of the secret hopes of the household must be given.

Athanase Granson was a thin, hollow-cheeked young man of
medium height, with a white face in which a pair of dark
eyes, bright with thought, looked like two marks made with
charcoal. The somewhat worn contours of that face, the
curving line of the lips, a sharply turned-up chin, a regu-
larly cut marble forehead, a melancholy expression caused by
the consciousness of power on the one hand and of poverty
on the other, — all these signs and characteristics told of im-
prisoned genius. So much so indeed, that anywhere but at
Alen^on his face would have won help for him from dis-
tinguished men, or from the women that can discern genius
incognito. For if this was not genius, at least it was the out-
ward form that genius takes; and if the strength of a high
heart was wanting, it looked out surely from those eyes. And
yet, while Athanase could find expression for the loftiest feel-
ing, an outer husk of shyness spoiled everything in him, down
to the very charm of youth, just as the frost of penury dis-
heartened every effort. Shut in by the narrow circle of pro-
vincial life, without approbation, encouragement, or any way
of escape, the thought within him was dying out before its
dawn. And Athanase besides had the fierce pride which pov-
erty intensifies in certain natures, the kind of pride by which
a man grows great in the stress of battle with men and cir-
cumstances, while at the outset it only handicaps him.

Genius manifests itself in two ways — either by taking its

84 TUB JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

own as soon as he finds it, like a Napoleon or a Moliere, or
by patiently revealing itself and waiting for recognition.
Young Granson belonged to the latter class. He was easily
discouraged, ignorant of his value. His turn of mind was
contemplative, he lived in thought rather than in action, and
possibly, to those who cannot imagine genius without the
Frenchman's spark of enthusiasm, he might have seemed in-
complete. But Athanase's power lay in the world of thought.
He was to pass through successive phases of emotion, hidden
from ordinary eyes, to one of those sudden resolves which
bring the chapter to a close and set fools declaring that "the
man is mad." The world's contempt for poverty was
sapping the life in Athanase. The bow, continually strung
tighter and tighter, was slackened by the enervating close
air of a solitude with never a breath of fresh air in it. He
was giving way under the strain of a cruel and fruit-
less struggle. Athanase had that in him which might
have placed his name among the foremost names of France ;
he had known what it was to gaze with glowing eyes over
Alpine heights and fields of air whither unfettered genius
soars, and now he was pining to death like some caged and
starved eagle.

While he had worked on unnoticed in the town library, he
buried his dreams of fame in his own soul lest they should in-
jure his prospects ; and he carried besides another secret hid-
den even more deeply in his heart, the secret love which hol-
lowed his cheeks and sallowed his forehead.

Athanase loved his distant cousin, that Mile. Cormon, for
whom his unconscious rivals du Bousquier and the Chevalier
de Valois were lying in ambush. It was a love born of self-
interest. Mile. Cormon was supposed to be one of the richest
people in the town ; and he, poor boy, had been drawn to love
her partly through the desire for material welfare, partly
through a wish formed times without number to gild his
mother's declining years ; and partly also through cravings for
the physical comfort necessary to men who live an intellectual
life. in his own eyes, his Jove was dishonored by its very

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 35

natural origin ; and he was afraid of the ridicule which people
pour on the love of a young man of three-and-twenty for a wo-
man of forty. And yet his love was quite sincere. Much that
happens in the provinces would be improbable upon the face of
it anywhere else, especially in matters of this kind.

But in a country town there are no unforeseen con-
tingencies ; there is no coming and going, no mystery, no such
thing as chance. Marriage is a necessity, and no family will ac-
cept a man of dissolute life. A connection between a young fel-
low like Athanase and a handsome girl might seem a natural
thing enough in a great city; in a country town it would be
enough to ruin a young man's chances of marriage, especially
if he were poor; for when the prospective bridegroom is
wealthy an awkward business of this sort may be smoothed
over. Between the degradation of certain courses and a
sincere love, a man that is not heartless can make but one
choice if he happens to be poor; he will prefer the disad-
vantages of virtue to the disadvantages of vice. But in a
country town the number of women with whom a young map
can fall in love is strictly limited. A pretty girl with
a fortune is beyond his reach in a place where every one's
income is known to a farthing. A penniless beauty is equally
out of the question. To take her for a wife would be "to
marry hunger and thirst," as the provincial saying goes.
Finally, celibacy has its dangers in youth. These reflections
explain how it has come to pass that marriage is the very
basis of provincial life.

Men in whom genius is hot and unquenchable, who are
forced to take their stand on the independence of poverty,
ought to leave these cold regions; in the provinces thought
meets with the persecution of brutal indifference, and no
woman cares or dares to play the part of a sister of charity
to the worker, the lover of art or sciences.

Who can rightly understand Athanase's love for Mile. Cor-
mon ? Not the rich, the sultans of society, who can find seragl-
ios at their pleasure; not respectability, keeping to the track
beaten hard by prejudice; nor yet those women who shut

80 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

their eye9 to the cravings of the artist temperament, and, tak-
ing it for granted that both sexes are governed by the same
laws, insist upon a system of reciprocity in their particular
virtues. The appeal must, perhaps, be made to young men
who suffer from the repression of young desires just as they
are putting forth their full strength; to the artist whose
genius is stilled within him by poverty till it becomes a dis-
ease ; to power at first unsupported, persecuted, and too often
unfriended till it emerges at length triumphant from the
twofold agony of soul and body.

These will know the throbbing pangs of the cancer which
was gnawing Athanase. Such as these have raised long, cruel
debates within themselves, with the so high end in sight and
no means of attaining to it. They have passed through the
experience of abortive effort; they have left the spawn of
genius on the barren sands. They know that the strength of
desire is as the scope of the imagination ; the higher the leap,
the lower the fall ; and how many restraints are broken in such
falls! These, like Athanase, catch glimpses of a glorious
future in the distance; all that lies between seems but a
transparent film of gauze to their piercing sight ; but of that
film which scarcely obscures the vision, society makes a wall
of brass. Urged on by their vocation, by the artists instinct
within them, they too seek times without number to make a
stepping-stone of sentiments which society turns in the same
way to practical ends. What! when marriages in the prov-
inces are calculated and arranged on every side with a view
to securing material welfare, shall it be forbidden to a strug-
gling artist or man of science to keep two ends in view, to
try to ensure his own subsistence that the thought within him
may live ?

Athanase Granson, with such ideas as these fermenting in
his head, thought at first of marriage with Mile. Cormon as a
definite solution of the problem of existence. He would be
free to work for fame, he could make his mother comfortable,
and he felt sure of himself — he knew that he could be faith-
ful to Mile. Cormon. But soon his purpose bred a real passion

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 3^

in him. It was an unconscious process. He set himself to
study Mile. Cormon ; then familiarity exercised its spell, and
at length Athanase saw nothing but beauties — the defects were
all forgotten.

The senses count for so much in the love of a young man of
three-and-twenty. Through the heat of desire woman is seen
as through a prism. From this point of view it was a touch
of genius in Beaumarchais to make the page Cherubino in the
play strain Marcellina to his heart. If you recollect, more-
over, that poverty restricted Athanase to a life of great loneli-
ness, that there was no other woman to look at, that his eyes
were always fastened upon Mile. Cormon, and that all the
light in the picture was concentrated upon her, it seems
natural, does it not, that he should love her? The feeling
hidden in the depths of his heart could but grow stronger
day by day. Desire and pain and hope and meditation, in
silence and repose, were filling up Athanase's soul to the brim ;
every hour added its drop. As his senses came to the aid of
imagination and widened the inner horizon, Mile. Cormon
became more and more awe-inspiring, and he grew more and
more timid.

The mother had guessed it all. She was a provincial, and
she frankly calculated the advantages of the match. Mile.
Cormon might think herself very lucky to marry a young
man of twenty-three with plenty of brains, a likely man to
do honor to his name and country. Still the obstacles, Atha-
nase's poverty and Mile. Cormon's age, seemed to her to be in-
surmountable ; there was nothing for it that she could see but
patience. She had a policy of her own, like du Bousquier and
the Chevalier de Valois ; she was on the lookout for her oppor-
tunity, waiting, with wits sharpened by self-interest and a
mother's love, for the propitious moment.

Of the Chevalier de Valois, Mme. Granson had no sus-
picion whatsoever ; du Bousquier she still credited with views
upon the lady, albeit Mile. Cormon had once refused him. An
adroit and secret enemy, Mme. Granson did the ex-contractor
untold harm to serve the son to whom she had not spoken a

38 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

word. After this, who does not see# the importance of Su
zanne's lie once confided to Mme. Granson ? What a weapoi
put into the hands of the charitable treasurer of the Maternit;
Fund ! How demurely she would carry the tale from housi
to house when she asked for subscriptions for the chasfc
Suzanne !

At this particular moment Athanase was pensively sitting
with his elbow on the table, balancing a spoon on the edge o
the empty bowl before him. He looked with unseeing eye
round the poor room, over the walls covered with an old
fashioned paper only seen in wine-shops, at the window-cur
tains with a chessboard pattern of pink-and-white squares, a
the red-brick floor, the straw-bottomed chairs, the painte<
wooden sideboard, the glass door that opened into the kitcher
As he sat facing his mother and with his back to the fire, am
as the fireplace was almost opposite the door, the first thin
which caught Suzanne's eyes was his pale face, with the ligb
from the street window falling full upon it, a face framed i
dark hair, and eyes with the gleam of despair in them, and
fever kindled by the morning's thoughts.

The grisette surely knows by instinct the pain and sorro1
of love ; at the sight of Athanase, she felt that sudden electri
thrill which comes we know not whence. We cannot explai
it ; some strong-minded persons deny that it exists, but man
a woman and many a man has felt that shock of sympath;
It is a flash, lighting up the darkness of the future, and at tri
same time a presentiment of the pure joy of love shared I
two souls, and a certainty that this other too understands,
is more like the strong, sure touch of a master hand upon tl
clavier of the senses than anything else. Eyes are riveted t
an irresistible fascination, hearts are troubled, the music <
joy rings in the ears and thrills the soul ; a voice cries, "It
he !" And then — then very likely, reflection throws a doucl
of cold water over all this turbulent emotion, and there is s
end of it.

In a moment, swift as a clap of thunder, a broadside
new thoughts poured in upon Suzanne. A lightning flash

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 39

love burned the weeds which had sprung up in dissipation
and wantonness. She saw all that she was losing by blighting
her name with a lie, the desecration, the degradation of it.
Only last evening this idea had been a joke, now it was like a
i heavy sentence passed upon her. She recoiled before her suc-
cess. But, after all, it was quite impossible that anything
; should come of this meeting; and the thought of Athanase's
i poverty, and a vague hope of making money and coming back
' from Paris with both hands full, to say, "I loved you all along"
— or fate, if you will have it so — dried up the beneficent dew.
The ambitious damsel asked shyly to speak for a moment with
' Mme. Granson, who took her into her bedroom.

When Suzanne came out again she looked once more at
Athanase. He was still sitting in the same attitude. She
choked back her tears.

As for Mme. Granson, she was radiant. She had found a

terrible weapon to use against du Bousquier at last ; she could

: deal him a deadly blow. So she promised the poor victim of

. seduction the support of all the ladies who subscribed to the

Maternity Fund. She foresaw a dozen calls in prospect. In

i the course of the morning and afternoon she would conjure

1 down a terrific storm upon the elderly bachelor's head. The

i Chevalier de Valois certainly foresaw the turn that matters

; were likely to take, but he had not expected anything like the

amount of scandal that came of it.

"We are going to dine with Mile. Cormon, you know, dear
boy," said Mme. Granson ; "take rather more pains with your
appearance. It is a mistake to neglect your dress as you do ;
i you look so untidy. Put on your best frilled shirt and your
green cloth coat. I have my reasons," she added, with a
mysterious air. "And besides, there will be a great many
people ; Mile. Cormon is going to the Prebaudet directly. If
a young man is thinking of marrying, he ought to make him-
self agreeable in every possible way. If girls would only tell
the truth, my boy, dear me! you would be surprised at the
things that take their fancy. It is often quite enough if a
young man rides by at the head of a company of artillery, or

40 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

comes to a dance in a suit of clothes that fits him passably
well. A certain way of carrying the head, a melancholy atti-
tude, is enough to set a girl imagining a whole life ; we invent
a romance to suit the hero; often he is only a stupid youn^
man, but the marriage is made. Take notice of M. de Valois,
study him, copy his manners ; see how he looks at ease ; he has
not a constrained manner, as you have. And talk a little;
any one might think that you knew nothing at all, you that
know Hebrew by heart."

Athanase heard her submissively, but he looked surprised.
He rose, took his cap, and went back to his work.

"Can mother have guessed my secret?" he thought, as he
went round by the Eue du Val-Noble where Mile. Cormon
lived, a little pleasure in which he indulged of a morning.
His head was swarming with romantic fancies.

"How little she thinks that going past her house at this
moment is a young man who would love her dearly, and be
true to her, and never cause her a single care, and leave her
fortune entirely in her own hands ! Oh me ! what a strange
fatality it is that we two should live as we do in the same town
and within a few paces of each other, and yet nothing can
bring us any nearer ! How if I spoke to her to-night ?"

Meanwhile Suzanne went home to her mother, thinking the
while of poor Athanase, feeling that for him she could find it
in her heart to do what many a woman must have longed to
do for the one beloved with superhuman strength ; she could
have made a stepping-stone of her beautiful body if so he
might come to his kingdom the sooner.

And now we must enter the house where all the actors in
this Scene (Suzanne excepted) were to meet that very even-
ing, the house belonging to the old maid, the converging
point of so many interests. As for Suzanne, that young
woman with her well-grown beauty, with courage sufficient to
burn her boats, like Alexander, and to begin the battle of lifej
with an uncalled-for sacrifice of her character, she now dis-
appears from the stage after bringing about a violently excit-

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 41

ing situation. Her wishes, moreover, were more than ful-
filled. A few days afterwards she left her native place with a
stock of money and fine clothes, including a superb green rep
gown and a green bonnet lined with rose color, M. de Valois'
gifts, which Suzanne liked better than anything else, better
even than the Maternity Society's money. If the Chevalier
had gone to Paris while Suzanne was in her hey-day, she
would assuredly have left all for him,

And so this chaste Susanna, of whom the elders scarcely
had more than a glimpse, settled herself comfortably and
hopefully in Paris, while all Alengon was deploring the mis-
fortunes with which the ladies of the Charitable and Mater-
nity Societies had manifested so lively a sympathy.

While Suzanne might be taken as a type of the handsome
Norman virgins who furnish, on the showing of a learned
physician, one-third of the supply devoured by the monster,
Paris, she entered herself, and remained in those higher
branches of her profession in which some regard is paid to
appearances. In an age in which, as M. de Valois said,
"woman has ceased to be woman," she was known merely as
Mme. du Val-Noble; in other times she would have rivaled
an Imperia, a Rhodope, a Ninon. One of the most distin-
guished writers of the Restoration took her under his protec-
tion, and very likely will marry her some day ; he is a journal-
ist, and above public opinion, seeing that he creates a new one
every six years.

In almost every prefecture of the second magnitude there
is some salon frequented not exactly by the cream of the local
society, but by personages both considerable and well consid-
ered. The host and hostess probably will be among the fore-
most people in the town. To them all houses are open; no
entertainment, no public dinner is given, but they are asked
to it * but in their salon you will not meet the gens a chateau —
lords of the manor, peers 6f France living on their broad
acres, and persons of the highest quality in the department,
though these are all on visiting terms with the family, and
exchange invitations to dinners and evening parties. The,

42 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

mixed society to be found there usually consists of the lesser
noblesse resident in the town, with the clergy and judicial
authorities. It is an influential assemblage. All the wit and
sense of the district is concentrated in its solid, unpretentious
ranks. Everybody in the set knows the exact amount of his
neighbor's income, and professes the utmost indifference to
dress and luxury, trifles held to be mere childish vanity com-
pared with the acquisition of a mouchoir a bceufs — a pocket-
handkerchief of some ten or a dozen acres, purchased after as
many years of pondering and intriguing and a prodigious
deal of diplomacy.

Unshaken in its prejudices whether good or ill, the coterie
goes on its way without a look before or behind. Nothing
from Paris is allowed to pass without a prolonged scrutiny;
innovations are ridiculous, and consols and cashmere shawls
alike objectionable. Provincials read nothing and wish to
learn nothing; for them, science, literature, and mechanical
invention are as the thing that is not. If a prefect does not
suit their notions, they do their best to have him removed;
if this cannot be done, they isolate him. So will you see the
inmates of a beehive wall up an intruding snail with wax.
Finally, of the gossip of the salon, history is made. Young
married women put in an appearance there occasionally
(though the card-table is the one resource) that their conduct
may be stamped with the approval of the coterie and their
social status confirmed.

Native susceptibilities are sometimes wounded by the su-
premacy of a single house, but the rest comfort themselves
with the thought that they save the expense entailed by the
position. Sometimes it happens that no one can afford to keep
open house, and then the bigwigs of the place look about them
for some harmless person whose character, position, and social
standing offer guarantees for the neutrality of the ground,
and alarm nobody's vanity or self-interest. This had been the
case at Alencon. For a long time past the best society of the
town has been wont to assemble in the house of the old maid
before mentioned, who little suspected Mme. Granson's de-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 43

signs on her fortune, or the secret hopes of the two elderly
bachelors who have just been unmasked.

Mile. Cormon was Mme. Granson's fourth cousin. She
lived with her mother's brother, a sometime vicar-general of
the bishopric of Seez; she had been her uncle's ward, and
would one day inherit his fortune. Rose Marie Victoire
Cormon was the last representative of a house which, plebeian
though it was, had associated and often allied itself with the
noblesse, and ranked among the oldest families in the prov-
ince. In former times the Cormons had been intendants of
the duchy of Alengon, and had given a goodly number of
magistrates to the bench, and several bishops to the Church.
M. de Sponde, Mile. Cormon's maternal grandfather, was
elected by the noblesse to the States-General ; and M. Cormon,
her father, had been asked to represent the Third Estate, but
neither of them accepted the responsibility. For the last
century, the daughters of the house had married into the
noble families of the province, in such sort that the Cormons
were grafted into pretty nearly every genealogical tree in the
duchy. No burgher family came so near being noble.

The house in which the present Mile. Cormon lived had
never passed out of the family since it was built by Pierre
Cormon in the reign of Henri IV. ; and of all the old maid's
worldy possessions, this one appealed most to the greed of her
elderly suitors; though, so far from bringing in money, the
ancestral home of the Cormons was a positive expense to its
owner. But it is such an unusual thing, in the very centre of
a country town, to find a house handsome without, convenient
within, and free from mean surroundings, that all Alengon
shared the feeling of envy.

The old mansion stood exactly half-way down the Rue du
Val-Noble, The Val-Noble, as it was called, probably because
the Brillante, the little stream which flows through the town,
has hollowed out a little valley for itself in a dip of the land
thereabouts. The most noticeable feature of the house was its
massive architecture, of the style introduced from Italy by
Marie de' Medici ; all the corner-stones and facings were cut

44 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

with diamond-shaped bosses, in spite of the difficulty of work-
ing in the granite of which it is built. It was a two-storied
house with a very high-pitched roof, and a row of dormer
windows, each with its carved tympanum standing pictur-
esquely enough above the lead-lined parapet with its orna-
mental balustrade. A grotesque gargoyle, the head of some
fantastic bodyless beast, discharged the rain-water through
its jaws into the street below, where great stone slabs, pierced
with five holes, were placed to receive it. Each gable termi-
nated in a leaden finial, a sign that this was a burgher's house,
for none but nobles had a right to put up a weathercock in
olden times. To right and left of the yard stood the stables
and the coach-house; the kitchen, laundry, and wood-shed.
One of the leaves of the great gate used to stand open; so
that passers-by, looking in through the little low wicket with
the bell attached, could see the parterre in the middle of a
spacious paved court, and the low-clipped privet hedges which
marked out miniature borders full of monthly roses, clove
gilli flowers, scabious, and lilies, and Spanish broom; as well
as the laurel bushes and pomegranates and myrtles which
grew in tubs put out of doors for the summer.

The scrupulous neatness and tidiness of the place must
have struck any stranger, and furnished him with a clue to
the old maid's character. The mistress' eyes must have been
unemployed, careful, and prying; less, perhaps, from any
natural bent, than for want of any occupation. Who but an
elderly spinster, at a loss how to fill an always emptyday,
would have insisted that no blade of grass should show Itself
in the paved courtyard, that the wall-tops should be scoured,
that the broom should always be busy, that the coach should
never be left with the leather curtains undrawn? Who else,
from sheer lack of other employment, could have introduced
something like Dutch cleanliness into a little province be-
tween Perche, Normandy, and Brittany, where the natives
make boast of their crass indifference to comfort ? The Che-
valier never climbed the steps without reflecting inwardly that
the house was fit for a peer of France; and du Bousquier simi-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 45

larly considered that the Mayor of Alengon ought to live there.

A glass door at the top of the flight of steps gave admit-
tance to an ante-chamber lighted by a second glass door oppo-
site, above a corresponding flight of steps leading into the
garden. This part of the house, a kind of gallery floored with
square red tiles, and wainscoted to elbow-height, was a hos-
pital for invalid family portraits ; one here and there had lost
an eye or sustained injury to a shoulder, another stood with a
hole in the place where his hat should have been, yet another
had lost a leg by amputation. Here cloaks, clogs, overshoes,
and umbrellas were left; everybody deposited his belongings
in the ante-chamber on his arrival, and took them again at
his departure. A long bench was set against either wall for
the servants who came of an evening with their lanterns to
fetch home their masters and mistresses, and a big stove was
set in the middle to mitigate the icy blasts which swept across
from door to door.

This gallery, then, divided the ground floor into two equal
parts. The staircase rose to the left on the side nearest the
courtyard, the rest of the space being taken up by the great
dining-room, with its windows looking out upon the garden,
and a pantry beyond, which communicated with the kitchen.
To the right lay the salon, lighted by four windows, and a
couple of smaller rooms beyond it, a boudoir which gave upon
the garden, and a room which did duty as a study and looked
into the courtyard. There was a complete suite of rooms on
the first floor, beside the Abbe de Sponde's apartments ; while
the attic story, in all probability roomy enough, had long
since been given over to the tenancy of rats and mice. Mile.
Cormon used to report their nocturnal exploits to the Cheva-
lier de Valois, and marvel at the futility of all measures taken
against them.

The garden, about half an acre in extent, was bounded by
the Brill ante, so called from the mica spangles which glitter
in its bed; not, however, in the Val-Noble, for the manu-
facturers and dyers of Alengon pour all their refuse into the
shallow stream before it reaches this point; and the opposite

46 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

bank, as always happens wherever a stream passes through a
town, was lined with houses where various thirsty industries
were carried on. Luckily, Mile. Cormon's neighbors were all
of them quiet tradesmen — a baker, a fuller, and one or two
cabinet-makers. Her garden, full of old-fashioned flowers,
naturally ended in a terrace, by way of a quay, with a short
flight of steps down to the water's edge. Try to picture the
wall-flowers growing in blue-and-white glazed jars along the
balustrade by the river, behold a shady walk to right and left
beneath the square-clipped lime-trees, and you will have some
idea of a scene full of unpretending cheerfulness and sober
tranquillity ; you can see the views of homely humble life along
the opposite bank, the quaint houses, the trickling stream of
the Brillante, the garden itself, the linden walks under the
garden walls, and the venerable home built by the Cormons.
How peaceful, how quiet it was ! If there was no ostentation,
there was nothing transitory, everything seemed to last for
ever there.

The ground-floor rooms, therefore, were given over to
social uses. You breathed the atmosphere of the Province,
ancient, unalterable Province. The great square-shaped salon,
with its four doors and four windows, was modestly wains-
coted with carved panels, and painted gray. On the wall,
above the single oblong mirror on the chimney-piece, the
Hours, in monochrome, were ushering in the day. For this
particular style of decoration, which used to infest the spaces
above doors, the artist's invention devised the eternal Seasons
which meet your eyes almost anywhere in central France, till
you loathe the detestable Cupids engaged in reaping, skating,
sowing seeds, or flinging flowers about. Every window was
overarched with a sort of baldachin with green damask cur-
tains drawn back with cords and huge tassels. The tapestry-
covered furniture, with a darn here and there at the edges of
the chairs, belonged distinctly to that period of the eighteenth
century when curves and contortions were in the very height
of fashion ; the frames were painted and varnished, the sub-
jects in the medallions on the backs were taken from La Fon-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 4T

taine. Four card-tables, a table for piquet, and another for
backgammon filled up the immense space. A rock crystal
chandelier, shrouded in green gauze, hung suspended from the
prominent crossbeam which divided the ceiling, the only
plastered ceiling in the house. Two branched candle-sconces
were fixed into the wall above the chimney-piece, where a
couple of blue Sevres vases stood on either side of a copper
gilt clock which represented a scene taken from Le Deserteur
— a proof of the prodigious popularity of Sedaine's work.
It was a group of no less than eleven figures, four inches
high; the Deserter emerging from jail escorted by a guard of
soldiers, while a young person, swooning in the foreground,
held out his reprieve. The hearth and fire-irons were of the
same date and style. The more recent family portraits —
one or two Eigauds and three pastels by Latour — adorned
the wainscot panels.

The study, paneled entirely in old lacquer work, red and
black and gold, would have fetched fabulous sums a few years
later; Mile. Cormon was as far as possible from suspecting
its value; but if she had been offered a thousand crowns for
every panel, she would not have parted with a single one. It
was a part of her system to alter nothing, and everywhere
in the provinces the belief in ancestral hoards is very strong.
The boudoir, never used, was hung with the old-fashioned
chintz so much run after nowadays by amateurs of the
"Pompadour style," as it is called.

The dining-room was paved with black-and-white stone;
it had not been ceiled, but the joists and beams were painted.
Ranged round the walls, beneath a flowered trellis, painted in
fresco, stood the portentous, marble-topped sideboards, in-
dispensable in the warfare waged in the provinces against the
powers of digestion. The chairs were cane-seated and
varnished, the doors of unpolished walnut wood. Everything
combined admirably to complete the general effect, the old-
world air of the house within and without. The provincial
spirit had preserved all as it had always been; nothing was
new or old, young or decrepit. You felt a sense of chilly
precision everywhere.
vol. 7 — 26

48 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Any tourist in Brittany, Normandy, Maine, or Anjou must
have seen some house more or less like this in one or other
provincial town; for the Hotel de Cormon was in its way a
very pattern and model of burgher houses over a large part
of France, and the better deserves a place in this chronicle
because it is at once a commentary on the manners of the
place and the expression of its ideas. Who does not feel,
even now, how much the life within the old walls was one of
peaceful routine?

For such library as the house possessed you must have de-
scended rather below the level of the Brillante. There stood
a solidly clasped oak-bound collection, none the worse, nay,
rather the better, for a thick coating of dust; a collection
kept as carefully as a cider-growing district is wont to keep
the products of the presses of Burgundy, Touraine, Gascony,
and the South. Here were works full of native force, and
exquisite qualities, with an added perfume of antiquity. No
one will import poor wines when the cost of carriage is so
heavy.

Mile. Cormon's whole circle consisted of about a hundred
and fifty persons. Of these, some went into the country, some
were ill, others from home on business in the department, but
there was a faithful band which always came, unless Mile.
Cormon gave an evening party in form; so also did those
persons who were bound either by their duties or old habit to
live in Alengon itself. All these people were of ripe age. A
few among them had traveled, but scarcely any of them had
gone beyond the province, and one or two had been implicated
in Chouannerie. People could begin to speak freely of the
war, now that rewards had come to the heroic defenders of
the good cause. M. de Valois had been concerned in the last
rising, when the Marquis de Montauran lost his life, be-
trayed by his mistress; and Marche-a-Terre, now peacefully
driving a grazier's trade by the banks of the Mayenne, had
made a famous name for himself. M. de Valois, during the
past six months, had supplied the key to several shrewd tricks
played off upon Hulot, the old Republican, commander of a

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 49

demi-brigade stationed at Alencon from 1798 till 1800.
There was talk of Hulot yet in the countryside.*

The women made little pretence of dress, except on Wed-
nesdays when Mile. Cormon gave a dinner party, and last
week's guests came to pay their "visit of digestion." On
Wednesday evening the rooms were filled. Guests and visitors
came in gala dress; here and there a woman brought
her knitting or her tapestry work, and some young ladies un-
blushingly drew patterns for point d'Alengon, by which they
supported themselves. Men brought their wives, because
there was so few young fellows there ; no whisper could pass
unnoticed, and therefore there was no danger of love-making
for maid or matron. Every evening at six o'clock the lobby
was filled with articles of dress, with sticks, cloaks, and lan-
terns. Every one was so well acquainted, the customs of the
house were so primitive, that if by any chance the Abbe de
Sponde was in the lime-tree walk, and Mile. Cormon in her
room, neither Josette the maid nor Jacquelin the man thought
it necessary to inform them of the arrival of visitors. The
first comer waited till some one else arrived; and when they
mustered players sufficiently for whist or boston, the game was
begun without waiting for the Abbe de Sponde or Made-
moiselle. When it grew dark, Josette or Jacquelin brought
lights as soon as the bell rang, and the old Abbe out in the
garden, seeing the drawing-room windows illuminated,
hastened slowly towards the house. Every evening the piquet,
boston, and whist tables were full, giving an average of
twenty-five or thirty persons, including those who came to
chat; but often there were as many as thirty or forty, and
then Jacquelin took candles into the study and the boudoir.
Between eight and nine at night the servants began to fill the
ante-chamber; and nothing short of a revolution would have
found any one in the salon by ten o'clock. At that hour the
frequenters of the house were walking home through the
streets, discussing the points made, or keeping up a conversa-
tion begun in the salon. Sometimes the talk turned on a

* See Les Chouam.

50 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

pocket-handkerchief of land on which somebody had an eye,
sometimes it was the division of an inheritance and disputes
among the legatees, or the pretensions of the aristocratic set.
You see exactly the same thing at Paris when the theatres
disgorge.

Some people who talk a great deal about poetry and un-
derstand nothing about it, are wont to rail at provincial
towns and provincial ways; but lean your forehead on your
left hand, as you sit with your feet on the fire-dogs, and rest
your elbow on your knee, and then — if you have fully realized
for yourself the level pleasant landscape, the house, the in-
terior, the folks within it and their interests, interests that
seem all the larger because the mental horizon is so limited
(as a grain of gold is beaten thin between two sheets of
parchment) — then ask yourself what human life is. Try to
decide between the engraver of the hieroglyphic birds on an
Egyptian obelisk, and one of these folk in Alencon playing
boston through a score of years with du Bousquier, M. de
Yalois, Mile. Cormon, the President of the Tribunal, the
Public Prosecutor, the Abbe de Sponde, Mme. Granson e
tuUi quanti. If the daily round, the daily pacing of the
same track in the footsteps of many yesterdays, is not ex-
actly happiness, it is so much like it that others, driven by
dint of storm-tossed days to reflect on the blessings of calm,
will say that it is happiness indeed.

To give the exact measure of the importance of Mile. Cor-
mon's salon, it will suffice to add that du Bousquier, a born
statistician, computed that its frequenters mustered among
them a hundred and thirty-one votes in the electoral college,
and eighteen hundred thousand livres of income derived from
lands in the province. The town of Alencon was not, it is
true, completely represented there. The aristocratic section,
for instance, had a salon of their own, and the receiver-
general's house was a sort of official inn kept, as in duty
bound, by the Government, where everybody who was anybody
danced, flirted, fluttered, fell in love, and supped. One or two
unclassified persons kept up the communications between

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 51

Mile. Conxion's salon and the other two, but the Cormon salon
criticised all that passed in the opposed camps very severely.
Sumptuous dinners gave rise to unfavorable comment; ices
at a dance caused searchings of heart ; the women's behavior
and dress and any innovations were much discussed.

Mile. Cormon being, as it were, the style of the firm, and
figure-head of an imposing coterie, was inevitably the object
of any ambition as profound as that of the du Bousquier or
the Chevalier de Valois. To both gentlemen she meant a
seat in the Chamber of Deputies, with a peerage for the
Chevalier, a receiver-general's post for du Bousquier. A
salon admittedly of the first rank is every whit as hard to
build up in a country town as in Paris. And here was the
salon ready made. To marry Mile. Cormon was to be lord of
Alengon. Finally, Athanase, the only one of the three suitors
that had ceased to calculate, cared as much for the woman as
for her money.

Is there not a whole strange drama (to use the modern
cant phrase) in the relative positions of these four human
beings? There is something grotesque, is there not, in the
idea of three rival suitors eagerly pressing about an old maid
who never so much as suspected their intentions, in
spite of her intense and very natural desire to be
married? Yet although, things being so, it may
seem an extraordinary thing that she should not have
married before, it is not difficult to explain how and
why, in spite of her fortune and her three suitors, Mile.
Cormon was still unwed.

From the first, following the family tradition, Mile. Cor-
mon had always wished to marry a noble, but between the
years 1789 and 1799 circumstances were very much against
her. While she would have wished to be the wife of a person
of condition, she was horribly afraid of the Eevolutionary
Tribunal ; and these two motives weighing about equally, she
remained stationary, according to a law which holds equally
good in aesthetics or statics. At the same time, the condition
of suspended judgment is not unpleasant for a girl, so long

r,U THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

as she feels young and thinks that she can choose where she
pleases. But, as all France knows, the system of government
immediately preceding the wars of Napoleon produced a vast
number of widows; and the number of heiresses was al-
together out of proportion to the number of eligible men.
When order was restored in the country, in the time of the
Consulate, external difficulties made marriage as much of a
problem as ever for Rose Marie Victoire. On the one hand,
she declined to marry an elderly man ; and, on the other, dread
of ridicule and circumstances put quite young men out of the
question. In those days heads of families married their sons
as mere boys, because in this way they escaped the conscrip-
tion. With the obstinacy of a landed proprietor, made-
moiselle would not hear of marrying a military man; she
had no wish to take a husband only to give him back to the
Emperor, she wished to keep him for herself. And so, be-
tween 1804 and 1815 it was impossible to compete with a
younger generation of girls, too numerous already in times
when cannon shot had thinned the ranks of marriageable
men.

Again, apart from Mile. Cormon's predilection for birth,
she had a very pardonable craze for being loved for her own
sake. You would scarcely believe the lengths to which she
carried this fancy. She set her wits to work to lay snares for
her admirers, to try their sentiments ; and that with such suc-
cess, that the unfortunates one and all fell into them, and
succumbed in the whimsical ordeals through which they
passed at unawares. Mile. Cormon did not study her suitors,
she played the spy upon them. A careless word, or a joke,
and the lady did not understand jokes very well, was excuse
enough to dismiss an aspirant as found wanting. This had
neither spirit nor delicacy; that was untruthful and not a
Christian ; one wanted to cut down tall timber and coin money
under the marriage canopy ; another was not the man to make
her happy; or, again, she had her suspicions of gout in the
family, or took fright at her wooer's antecedents. Like
Mother Church, she would fain see a priest without blemish

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 5S

at her altar. And then Eose Marie Victoire made the worst
of herself, and was as anxious to be loved, with all her facti-
tious plainness and imaginary faults, as other women are to
be married for virtues which they have not and for borrowed
beauty. Mile. Cormon's ambition had its source in the finest
instincts of womanhood. She would reward her lover by
discovering to him a thousand virtues after marriage, as
other women reveal the many little faults kept hitherto strenu-
ously out of sight. But no one understood. The noble girl
came in contact with none but commonplace natures, with
whom practical interests came first; the finer calculations of
feeling were beyond their comprehension.

She grew more and more conspicuous as the critical period
so ingeniously called "second youth" drew nearer. Her fancy
for making the worst of herself with increasing success
frightened away the latest recruits; they hesitated to unite
their lot with hers. The strategy of her game of hoodman-
blind (the virtues to be revealed when the finder's eyes were
opened) was a complex study for which few men have in-
clination ; they prefer perfection ready-made. An ever-pres-
ent dread of being married for her money made her unrea-
sonably distrustful and uneasy. She fell foul of the rich,
and the rich could look higher; she was afraid of poor men,
she would not believe them capable of that disinterestedness
on which she set such store; till at length her rejections and
other circumstances let in an unexpected light upon the minds
of suitors thus presented for her selection like dried peas on
a seedman's sieve. Every time a marriage project came to
nothing, the unfortunate girl, being gradually led to despise
mankind, saw the other sex at last in a false light. In-
evitably, in her inmost soul, she grew misanthropic, a tinge
of bitterness was infused into her conversation, a certain
harshness into her expression. And her manners became
more and more rigid under the stress of enforced celibacy;
in her despair she sought to perfect herself. It was a noble
vengeance. She would polish and cut for God the rough
diamond rejected by men.

54 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Before long public opinion was against Mile. Cormon.
People accept the verdict which a woman passes upon herself
if, being free to marry, she fails to fulfil expectations, or is
known to have refused eligible suitors. Every one decides
that she has her own reasons for declining marriage, and
those reasons are always misinterpreted. There was some
hidden physical defect or deformity, they said ; but she, poor
girl, was pure as an angel, healthy as a child, and overflow-
ing with kindness. Nature had meant her to know all the
joys, all the happiness, all the burdens of motherhood.

Yet in her person Mile. Cormon did not find a natural
auxiliary to gain her heart's desire. She had no beauty, save
of the kind so improperly called "the devil's"; that full-
blown freshness of youth which, theologically speaking, the
Devil never could have possessed; unless, indeed, we are to
look for an explanation of the expression in the Devil's con-
tinual desire of refreshing himself. The heiress' feet were
large and flat ; when, on rainy days, she crossed the wet streets
between her house and St. Leonard's, her raised skirt dis-
played (without malice, be it said) a leg which scarcely
seemed to belong to a woman, so muscular was it, with a
small, firm, prominent calf like a sailor's. She had a figure
for a wet nurse. Her thick, honest waist, her strong, plump
arms, her red hands; everything about her, in short, was in
keeping with the round, expansive contours and portly fair-
ness of the Norman style of beauty. Wide open, prominent
eyes of no particular color gave to a face, by no means dis-
tinguished in its round outlines, a sheepish, astonished ex-
pression not altogether inappropriate, however, in an old
maid : even if Rose had not been innocent, she must still have
seemed so. An aquiline nose was oddly assorted with a low
forehead, for a feature of that type is almost invariably found
in company with a lofty brow. In spite of thick, red lips,
the sign of great kindliness of nature, there were evidently
so few ideas behind that forehead, that Hose's heart could
scarcely have been directed by her brain. Kind she must
certainly be, but not gracious. And we are apt to judge the

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 55

defects of goodness very harshly, while we make the most of
the redeeming qualities of vice.

An extraordinary length of chestnut hair lent Eose Cormon
such beauty as belongs to vigor and luxuriance, her chief per-
sonal characteristics. In the time of her pretensions she had
a trick of turning her face in three-quarters profile to display
a very pretty ear, gracefully set between the azure-streaked
white throat and the temple, and thrown into relief by thick
masses of her hair. Dressed in a ball gown, with her head
poised at this angle, Eose might almost seem beautiful. With
her protuberant bust, her waist, her high health, she used to
draw exclamations of admiration from Imperial officers.
"What a fine girl !" they used to say.

But, as years went on, the stoutness induced by a quiet,
regular life distributed itself so unfortunately over her person,
that its original proportions were destroyed. No known
variety of corset could have discovered the poor spinster's
hips at this period of her existence ; she might have been cast
in one uniform piece. The youthful proportions of her figure
were completely lost ; her dimensions had grown so excessive,
that no one could see her stoop without fearing that, being
so topheavy, she would certainly overbalance herself; but
nature had provided a sufficient natural counterpoise, which
enabled her to dispense with all adventitious aid from "dress
improvers." Everything about Eose was very genuine.

Her chin developed a triple fold, which reduced the appar-
ent length of her throat, and made it no easy matter to turn
her head. She had no wrinkles, she had creases. Wags used
to assert that she powdered herself, as nurses powder babies,
to prevent chafing of the skin. To a young man, consumed,
like Athanase, with suppressed desires, this excessive corpu-
lence offered just the kind of physical charm which could not
fail to attract youth. Youthful imaginations, essentially in-
trepid, stimulated by appetite, are prone to dilate upon the
beauties of that living expanse. So does the plump partridge
allure the epicure's knife. And, indeed, any debt-burdened
young man of fashion in Paris would have resigned himself

56 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

readily enough to fulfilling his part of the contract and mak-
ing Mile. Cormon happy. Still the unfortunate spinster had
already passed her fortieth year!

At this period of enforced loneliness, after the long, vain
struggle to fill her life with those interests that are all in
all to woman, she was fortifying herself in virtue by the most
strict observance of religious duties; she had turned to the
great consolation of well-preserved virginity. A confessor,
endowed with no great wisdom, had directed Mile. Cormon in
the paths of asceticism for some three years past, recommend-
ing a system of self -scourging calculated, according to modern
doctors, to produce an effect the exact opposite of that ex-
pected by the poor priest, whose knowledge of hygiene was
but limited. These absurd practices were beginning to bring
a certain monastic tinge to Eose Cormon's face; with fre-
quent pangs of despair, she watched the sallow hues of middle
age creeping across its natural white and red ; while the trace
of down about the corners of her upper lip showed a distinct
tendency to darken and increase like smoke. Her temples
grew shiny. She had passed the turning-point, in fact. It
was known for certain in Alengon that Mile. Cormon suffered
from heated blood. She inflicted her confidence upon the
Chevalier de Valois, reckoning up the number of foot-baths
that she took, and devising cooling treatment with him. And
that shrewd observer would end by taking out his snuff-box,
and gazing at the portrait of the Princess Goritza as he re-
marked, "But the real sedative, my dear young lady, would
be a good and handsome husband."

"But whom could one trust?" returned she.

But the Chevalier only flicked away the powdered snuff
from the creases of his paduasoy waistcoat. To anybody else
the proceeding would have seemed perfectly natural, but it
always made the poor old maid feel uncomfortable.

The violence of her objectless longings grew to such a height
that she shrank from looking a man in the face, so afraid was
she that the thoughts which pierced her heart might be read
in her eyes. It was one of her whims, possibly a later de-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 57

velopment of her former tactics, to behave almost ungra-
ciously to the possible suitors towards whom she still felt her-
self attracted, so afraid was she of being accused of folly.
Most people in her circle were utterly incapable of appreciat-
ing her motives, so noble throughout ; they explained her man-
ner to her coevals in single blessedness by a theory of revenge
for some past slight.

With the beginning of the year 1815 Rose Cormon had
reached the fatal age, to which she did not confess. She was
forty-two. By this time her desire to be married had
reached a degree of intensity bordering on monomania. She
saw her chances of motherhood fast slipping away for ever;
and, in her divine ignorance, she longed above all things for
children of her own. There was not a soul found in Alencon
to impute a single unchaste desire to the virtuous girl. She
loved love, taking all for granted, without realizing for her-
self what love would be — a devout Agnes, incapable of in-
venting one of the little shifts of Moliere's heroine.

She had been counting upon chance of late. The disband-
ing of the Imperial troops and the reconstruction of the
King's army was sending a tide of military men back to their
native places, some of them on half-pay, some with pensions,
some without, and all of them anxious to find some way of
amending their bad fortune, and of finishing their days in a
fashion which would mean the beginning of happiness
for Mile. Cormon. It would be hard indeed if she could
not find a single brave and honorable man among all those
who were coming back to the neighborhood. He must have a
sound constitution in the first place, he must be of suitable
age, and a man whose personal character would serve as a
passport to his Bonapartist opinions ; perhaps he might even
be willing to turn Royalist for the sake of gaining a lost
social position.

Supported by these mental calculations, Mile. Cormon
maintained the severity of her attitude for the first few
months of the year; but the men that came back to the town
were all either too old or too young, or their characters were

58 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

too bad, or their opinions too Bonapartist, or their station in
life was incompatible with her position, fortune, and habits.
The case grew more and more desperate every day. Officers
high in the service had used their advantages under Napoleon
to marry, and these gentlemen now became Eoyalists for the
sake of their families. In vain had she put up prayers to
heaven to send her a husband that she might be happy in
Christian fashion; it was written, no doubt, that she should
die virgin and martyr, for not a single likely-looking man
presented himself.

In the course of conversation in her drawing-room of an
evening, the frequenters of the house kept the police register
under tolerably strict supervision; no one could arrive in
Alengon but they informed themselves at once as to the new-
comer's mode of life, quality, and fortune. But, at the same
time, Alengon is not a town to attract many strangers ; it is
not on the highroad to any larger city; there are no chance
arrivals ; naval officers on their way to Brest do not so much
as stop in the place.

Poor Mile. Cormon at last comprehended that her choice
was reduced to the natives. At times her eyes took an almost
fierce expression, to which the Chevalier would respond with a
keen glance at her as he drew out his snuff-box to gaze at the
Princess Goritza. M. de Valois knew that in feminine
jurisprudence, fidelity to an old love is a guarantee for the
new. But Mile. Cormon, it cannot be denied, was not very
intelligent. His snuff-box strategy was wasted upon her.

She redoubled her watchfulness, the better to combat the
"evil one," and with devout rigidness and the sternest prin-
ciples she consigned her cruel sufferings to the secret places
of her life.

At night, when she was alone, she thought of her lost youth,
of her faded bloom, of the thwarted instincts of her nature;
and while she laid her passionate longings at the foot of the
Cross, together with all the poetry doomed to remain pent
within her, she vowed inwardly to take the first man that was
willing to marry her, just as he was, without putting him to

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 59

any proof whatsoever. Sounding her own dispositions, after
a series of vigils, each more trying than the last, in her own
mind she went so far as to espouse a sub-lieutenant,
a tobacco-smoker to boot ; nay, he was even head over ears in
debt. Him she proposed to transform with care, submission,
and gentleness into a pattern for mankind. But only in
the silence of night could she plan these imaginary marriages,
in which she amused herself with playing the sublime part of
guardian angel ; with morning, if Josette found her mistress'
bedclothes turned topsy-turvy, mademoiselle had recovered
her dignity; with morning, after breakfast, she would have
nothing less than a solid landowner, a well-preserved man of
forty — a young man, as you may say.

The Abbe de Sponde was incapable of giving his niece as-
sistance of any sort in schemes for marriage. The good man,
aged seventy or thereabouts, referred all the calamities of the
Eevolution to the design of a Providence prompt to punish
a dissolute Church. For which reasons M. de Sponde had long
since entered upon a deserted path to heaven, the way trodden
by the hermits of old. He led an ascetic life, simply, unobtru-
sively, hiding his deeds of charity, his constant prayer and
fasting from all other eyes. Necessity was laid upon all
priests, he thought, to do as he did; he preached by ex-
ample, turning a serene and smiling face upon the world,
while he completely cut himself off from worldly interests.
All his thoughts were given to the afflicted, to the needs of
the Church, and the saving of his own soul. He left the
management of his property to his niece. She paid over his
yearly income to him, and, after a slight deduction for his
maintenance, the whole of it went in private almsgiving or in
donations to the Church.

All the Abbe's affections were centered upon his niece, and
she looked upon him as a father. He was a somewhat absent-
minded father, however, without the remotest conception of
the rebellion of the flesh; a father who gave thanks to God
for maintaining his beloved daughter in a state of virginity ;
for from his youth up he had held, with St. John Chrysostom,

60 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"that virginity is as much above the estate of marriage as the
angels are above man/'

Mile. Cormon was accustomed to look up to her uncle ;
she did not venture to confide her wishes for a change of i
condition to him ; and he, good man, on his side was ac-
customed to the ways of the house, and perhaps might not \
have relished the introduction of a master into it. Absorbed
in thoughts of the distress which he relieved, or lost in fathom-
less inner depths of prayer, he was often unconscious of what j
was going on about him ; frequenters of the house set this
down to absent-mindedness; but while he said little, hisj
silence was neither unsociable nor ungenial. A tall, spare,
grave, and solemn man, his face told of kindly feeling and a ;
great inward peace. His presence in the house seemed as it !
were to consecrate it. The Abbe entertained a strong liking j
for that elderly sceptic the Chevalier de Valois. Far apart as
their lives were, the two grand wrecks of the eighteenth cen- 1
tury clergy and noblesse recognized each other by generic
signs and tokens; and the Chevalier, for that matter, could j
converse with unction with the Abbe, just as he talked like a |
father with his grisettes.

Some may think that Mile. Cormon would leave no means j
untried to gain her end; that among other permissible femi-
nine artifices, for instance, she would turn to her toilettes,
wear low-cut bodices, use the passive coquetry of a display of
the splendid equipment with which she might take the field. |
On the contrary, she was as heroic and steadfast in her high-
necked gown as a sentry in his sentry-box. All her dresses,,'
bonnets, and finery were made in Alencon by two hunchbacked
sisters, not wanting in taste. But in spite of the entreaties
of the two artists, Mile. Cormon utterly declined the ad-;
ventitious aid of elegance; she must be substantial through-
out, body and plumage, and possibly her heavy-looking dresses!
became her not amiss. Laugh who will at her, poor thing.
Generous natures, those who never trouble themselves abouil
the form in which good feeling shows itself, but admire it
wherever they find it, will see something sublime in this trait

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 61

Perhaps some slight-natured feminine critic may begin to
carp, and say that there is no woman in France so simple
but that she can angle for a husband ; that Mile. Cormon is
one of those abnormal creatures which common-sense for-
bids us to take for a type; that the best or the most babyish
unmarried woman that has a mind to hook a gudgeon
can put forward some physical charm wherewith to bait her
line. But when you begin to think that the sublime Apostolic
Roman Catholic is still a power in Brittany and the ancient
duchy of Alengon, these criticisms fall to the ground. Faith
and piety admit no such subtleties. Mile. Cormon kept to the
straight path, preferring the misfortunes of a maidenhood in-
finitely prolonged to the misery of untruthfulness, to the sin
of small deceit. Armed with self-discipline, such a girl can-
not make a sacrifice of a principle; and therefore love (or
self-interest) must make a determined effort to find her out
and win her.

Let us have the courage to make a confession, painful in
these days when religion is nothing but a means of advance-
ment for some, a dream for others ; the devout are subject to
a kind of moral ophthalmia, which, by the especial grace of
Providence, removes a host of small earthly concerns out of
the sight of the pilgrim of Eternity. In a word, the devout
are apt to be dense in a good many ways. Their stupidity, at
the same time, is a measure of the force with which their
spirits turn heavenwards; albeit the sceptical M. de Yalois
maintained that it is a moot point whether stupid women take
naturally to piety, or whether piety, on the other hand, has a
stupefying effect upon an intelligent girl.

It must be borne in mind that it is the purest orthodox
goodness, ready to drink rapturously of every cup set before it,
to submit devoutly to the will of God, to see the print of
the divine finger everywhere in the day of life, — that it is
catholic virtue stealing like hidden light into the innermost
recesses of this History that alone can bring everything into
right relief, and widen its significance for those who yet have
faith. And, again, if the stupidity is admitted, why should

62 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

the misfortunes of stupidity be less interesting than the woes
of genius in a world where fools so overwhelmingly pre-
ponderate ?

To resume. Mile. Cormon's divine girlish ignorance of
life was an offence in the eyes of the world. She was any-
thing but observant, as her treatment of her suitors suffi-
ciently showed. At this very moment, a girl of sixteen who
had never opened a novel in her life might have read a hun-
dred chapters of romance in Athanase's eyes. But Mile.
Cormon saw nothing all the while; she never knew that the
young man's voice was unsteady with emotion which he dared
not express, and the woman who could invent refinements of
high sentiment to her own undoing could not discern the same
feelings in Athanase.

Those who know that qualities of heart and brain are as
independent of each other as genius and greatness of soul,
will see nothing extraordinary in this psychological
phenomenon. A complete human being is so rare a prodigy,
that Socrates, that pearl among mankind, agreed with a con-
temporary phrenologist that he himself was born to be a very
scurvy knave. A great general may save his country at Zu-
rich, and yet take a commission from contractors ; a banker's
doubtful honesty does not prevent him from being a states-
man ; a great composer may give the world divine music, and
yet forge another man's signature, and a woman of refined
feeling may be excessively weak-minded. In short, a devout
woman may have a very lofty soul, and yet have no ears to
hear the voice of another noble soul at her side.

The unaccountable freaks of physical infirmity find a
parallel in the moral world. Here was a good creature mak-
ing her preserves and breaking her heart till she grew almost
ridiculous, because, forsooth, there was no one to eat theml
but her uncle and herself. Those who sympathized with her I
for the sake of her good qualities, or, in some cases, on ac-
count of her defects, used to laugh over her disappointments.'
People began to wonder what would become of so fine a prop-i
erty with all Mile. Cormon's savings, and her uncle's col
boot

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 63

It was long since the}' began to suspect that at bottom,
and in spite of appearances, Mile. Cormon was "an original."
Originality is not allowed in the provinces ; originality means
that you have ideas which nobody else can understand, and
in a country town people's intellects, like their manner of life,
must all be on a level. Even in 1804 Kose's matri-
monial prospects were considered so problematical, that
"to marry like Mile. Cormon" was a current saying in
Alengon, and the most ironical way of suggesting Such-an-
one would never marry at all.

The necessity to laugh at some one must indeed be im-
perious in France, if any one could be found to raise a smile
at the expense of that excellent creature. Not merely did
she entertain the whole town, she was charitable, she was
good ; she was incapable of saying a spiteful word ; and more
than that, she was so much in unison with the whole spirit
of the place, its manners and its customs, that she was gen-
erally beloved as the very incarnation of the life of the
province ; she had imbibed all its prejudices and made its in-
terests hers ; she had never gone beyond its limits, she adored
it ; she was embedded in provincial tradition. In spite of her
eighteen thousand livres .per annum, a tolerably large income
for the neighborhood, she accommodated herself to the ways
of her less wealthy neighbors. When she went to her country
house, the Prebaudet, for instance, she drove over in an old-
fashioned wicker cariole hung with white leather straps, and
fitted with a couple of rusty weather-beaten leather curtains,
which scarcely closed it in. The equipage, drawn by a fat
broken-winded mare, was known all over the town. Jacque-
lin, the man-servant, cleaned it as carefully as if it had been
the finest brougham from Paris. Mademoiselle was fond of it ;
it had lasted her a dozen years, a fact which she was wont to
point out with the triumphant joy of contented parsimony.
Most people were grateful to her for forbearing to humiliate
them by splendor which she might have flaunted before their
eyes ; it is even credible that if she had sent for a caleehe from

Paris, it would have caused more talk than any of her "disap-

vol. 7 — 27

Q4 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

pointments." After all, the finest carriage in the world, like
the old-fashioned cariole, could only have taken her to the
Prebaudet; and in the provinces they always keep the end in
view, and trouble themselves very little about the elegance of
the means, provided that they are sufficient.

To complete the picture of Mile. Cormon's household and
domestic life, several figures must be grouped round Mile.
Cormon and the Abbe de Sponde. Jacquelin, and Josette,
and Mariette, the cook, ministered to the comfort of uncie and
niece.

Jacquelin, a man of forty, short and stout, dark-haired and
ruddy, with a countenance of the Breton sailor type, had
been in service in the house for twenty-two years. He waited
at table, groomed the mare, worked in the garden, cleaned the
Abbe's shoes, ran errands, chopped firewood, drove the cariole,
went to the Prebaudet for corn, hay and straw, and
slept like a dormouse in the ante-chamber of an evening. He
was supposed to be fond of Josette, and Josette was six-and-
thirty. But if she had married him, Mile. Cormon would
have dismissed her, and so the poor lovers were fain to save
up their wages in silence, and to wait and hope for made-
moiselle's marriage, much as the Jews look for the advent of
the Messiah.

Josette came from the district between Alengon and
Mortagne; she was a fat little woman. Her face, which re-
minded you of a mud-bespattered apricot, was not wanting
either in character or intelligence. She was supposed to rule
her mistress. Josette and Jacquelin, feeling sure of the
event, found consolation, presumably by discounting the
future. Mariette, the cook, had likewise been in the family
for fifteen years; she was skilled in the cookery of the country
and the preparation of the most esteemed provincial dishes.

Perhaps the fat old bay mare, of the Normandy breed,
which Mile. Cormon used to drive to the Prebaudet, ought to
count a good deal, for the affection which the five inmates of
the house bore the animal amounted to mania. Penelope,
for that was her name, had been with them for eighteen years ;

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 65

and so well was she cared for, so regularly tended, that Jacque-
lin and mademoiselle hoped to get quite another ten years
of work out of her. Penelope was a stock subject and source
of interest in their lives. It seemed as if poor Mile. Cormon,
with no child of her own, lavished all her maternal affection
upon the lucky beast. Almost every human being leading a
solitary life in a crowded world will surround himself with
a make-believe family of some sort, and Penelope took the
place of dogs, cats, or canaries.

These four faithful servants — for Penelope's intelligence
had been trained till it was very nearly on a par with the
wits of the other three, while they had sunk pretty much into
the dumb, submissive jog-trot life of the animal — these four
retainers came and went and did the same things day after
day, with the unfailing regularity of clockwork. But, to use
their own expression, "they had eaten their white bread first/'
Mile. Cormon suffered from a fixed idea upon the nerves;
and, after the wont of such sufferers, she grew fidgety and
hard to please, not by force of nature, but because she had no
outlet for her energies. She had neither husband nor
children to fill her thoughts, so they fastened upon trifles.
She would talk for hours at a stretch of some inconceivably
small matter, of a dozen serviettes, for instance, lettered Z,
which somehow or other had been put before 0.

"Why, what can Josette be thinking about?" she cried.
"Has she no notion what she is doing ?"

Jacquelin chanced to be late in feeding Penelope one after-
noon, so every day for a whole week afterwards mademoiselle
inquired whether the horse had been fed at two o'clock. Her
narrow imagination spent itself on small matters. A layer of
dust forgotten by the feather mop, a slice of scorched toast,
an omission to close the shutters on Jacquelin's part when the
sun shone in upon furniture and carpets, — all these important
trifles produced serious trouble, mademoiselle lost her temper
over them. "Nothing was the same as it used to be. The
servants of old days were so changed that she did not know
them. They were spoilt. She was too good to them/' and

66 TUB JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

bo forth and so forth. One day Josette gave her mistress the
Journee du Chretien instead of the Quinzaine de Paques. The
whole town heard of the mistake before night. Mademoiselle
had been obliged to get up and come out of church, disturbing
whole rows of chairs and raising the wildest conjectures, so
that she was obliged afterwards to give all her friends a full
account of the mishap.

"Josette/' she said mildly, when she had come the whole
way home from St. Leonard's, "this must never happen
again."

Mile. Cormon was far from suspecting that it was a very
fortunate thing for her that she could vent her spleen in petty
squabbles. The mind, like the body, requires exercise ; these
quarrels were a sort of mental gymnastics. Josette and Jacque-
lin took such unevennesses of temper as the agricultural
laborer takes the changes of the weather. The three good
souls could say among themselves that "It is a fine day," or
"It rains," without murmuring against the powers above.
Sometimes in the kitchen of a morning they would wonder in
what humor mademoiselle would wake, much as a farmer
studies the morning mists. And of necessity Mile. Cormon
ended by seeing herself in all the infinitely small details which
made up her life. Herself and God, her confessor and her
washing-days, the preserves to be made, the services of the
church to attend, and the uncle to take care of, — all these
things absorbed faculties that were none of the strongest.
For her the atoms of life were magnified by virtue of anoptical
process peculiar to the selfish or the self-absorbed. To so per-
fectly healthy a woman, the slightest symptom of indigestion
was a positively alarming portent. She lived, moreover,
under the ferule of the system of medicine practised by our
grandsires ; a drastic dose fit to kill Penelope, taken four times
a year, merely gave Mile. Cormon a fillip.

What tremendous ransackings of the week's dietary if
Josette, assisting her mistress to dress, discovered a scarcely
visible pimple on shoulders that still boasted a satin skin!
What triumph if the maid could bring a certain hare to her

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 07

mistress' recollection, and trace the accursed pimple to its
origin in that too heating article of food ! With what joy the
two women would cry, "It is the hare beyond a doubt !"

"Mariette over-seasoned it," mademoiselle would add; "I
always tell her not to overdo it for my uncle and me, but
Mariette has no more memory than "

"Than the hare," suggested Josette.

"It is the truth/' returned mademoiselle; "she has no more
memory than the hare ; you have just hit it."

Four times in a year, at the beginning of each season, Mile.
Cormon went to spend a certain number of days at the
Prebaudet. It was now the middle of May, when she liked
to see how her apple-trees had "snowed," as they say in the
cider country, an allusion to the white blossoms strewn in the
orchards in the spring. When the circles of fallen petals look
like snow-drifts under the trees, the proprietor may hope to
have abundance of cider in the autumn. Mile. Cormon esti-
mated her barrels, and at the same time superintended any
necessary after-winter repairs, planning out work in the
garden and orchard, from which she drew no inconsiderable
supplies. Each time of year had its special business.

Mademoiselle used to give a farewell dinner to her faithful
inner circle before leaving, albeit she would see them again
| at the end of three weeks. All Alengon knew when the
i journey was to be undertaken. Any one that had fallen behind-
! hand immediately paid a call, her drawing-room was filled;
everybody wished her a prosperous journey, as if she had been
starting for Calcutta. Then, in the morning, all the trades-
people were standing in their doorways ; every one, great and
' small, watched the cariole go past, and it seemed as if every-
body learned a piece of fresh news when one repeated after
another, "So Mile. Cormon is going to the Prebaudet."
One would remark, "She has bread ready baked, she has !"
And his neighbor would return, "Eh ! my lads, she is a good
woman ; if property always fell into such hands as hers, there
would not be a beggar to be seen in the countryside."

88 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Or another would exclaim, "Hullo ! I should not wonder
if our oldest vines are in flower, for there is Mile. Cormon
setting out for the Prebaudet. How comes it that she is so
little given to marrying ?"

"I should be quite ready to marry her, all the same," a wag
would answer. "The marriage is half made — one side is
willing, but the other isn't. Pooh ! the oven is heating for
M. du Bousquier."

"M . du Bousquier ? She has refused him."

At every house that evening people remarked solemnly,
"Mile. Cormon has gone."

Or perhaps, "So you have let Mile. Cormon go !"

The Wednesday selected by Suzanne for making a scandal
chanced to be this very day of leave-taking, when Mile. Cor-
mon nearly drove Josette to distraction over the packing of
the parcels which she meant to take with her. A good deal
that was done and said in the town that morning was like to
lend additional interest to the farewell gathering at night.
While the old maid was busily making preparations for her
journey; while the astute Chevalier was playing his game of
piquet in the house of Mile. Armande de Gordes, sister of the
aged Marquis de Gordes, and queen of the aristocratic salon,
Mme. Granson had sounded the alarm bell in half a score of
houses. There was not a soul but felt some curiosity to see
what sort of figure the seducer would cut that evening ; and to
Mme. Granson and the Chevalier de Valois it was an impor-
tant matter to know how Mile. Cormon would take the news,
in her double quality of marriageable spinster and lady presi-
dent of the Maternity Fund. As for the unsuspecting du
Bousquier, he was taking the air on the Parade. He was just
beginning to think that Suzanne had made a fool of him ; and
this suspicion only confirmed the rules which he had laid
down with regard to womankind.

On these high days the cloth was laid about half-past three
in the Maison Cormon. Four o'clock was the state dinner
hour in Alenqon, on ordinary days they dined at two, as in the
time of the Empire ; but, then, they supped I

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN (J9

Mile. Cormon always felt an inexpressible sense of satisfac-
tion when she was dressed to receive her guests as mistress of
her house. It was one of the pleasures which she most relished,
be it said without malice, though egoism certainly lay beneath
the feeling. When thus arrayed for conquest, a ray of hope
slid across the darkness of her soul ; a voice within her cried
that nature had not endowed her so abundantly in vain, that
surely some enterprising man was about to appear for her.
She felt the younger for the wish, and the fresher for her
toilet; she looked at her stout figure with a certain elation;
and afterwards, when she went downstairs to submit salon,
study, and boudoir to an awful scrutiny, this sense of satisfac-
tion still remained with her. To and fro she went, with the
naive contentment of the rich man who feels conscious at every
moment that he is rich and will lack for nothing all his life
long. She looked round upon her furniture, the eternal furni-
ture, the antiquities, the lacquered panels, and told herself
that such fine things ought to have a master.

After admiring the dining-room, where the space was
filled by the long table with its snowy cloth, its score of
covers symmetrically laid; after going through the roll-call
of a squadron of bottles ordered up from the cellar, and mak-
ing sure that each bore an honorable label ; and finally, after
a most minute verification of a score of little slips of paper
on which the Abbe had written the names of the guests with a
trembling hand — it was the sole occasion on which he took an
active part in the household, and the place of every guest
always gave rise to grave discussion — after this review, Mile.
Cormon in her fine array went into the garden to join her
uncle ; for at this pleasantest hour of the day he used to walk
up and down the terrace beside the Brillante, listening to the
twittering of the birds, which, hidden closely among the
leaves in the lime-tree walk, knew no fear of boys or sports-
men.

Mile. Cormon never came out to the Abbe during these
intervals of waiting without asking some hopelessly absurd
Question, in the hope of drawing the good man into a discus-

70 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

sion which might interest him. Her reasons for so doing must
be given, for this very characteristic trait adds the finishing
touch to her portrait.

Mile. Cormon considered it a duty to talk; not that she
was naturally loquacious, for, unfortunately, with her dearth
of ideas and very limited stock of phrases, it was difficult to
hold forth at any length ; but she thought that in this way she
was fulfilling the social duties prescribed by religion, which
bids us be agreeable to our neighbor. It was a duty which
weighed so much upon her mind, that she had submitted this
case of conscience out of the Child's Guide to Manners to her
director, the Abbe Couturier. Whereupon, so far from being
disarmed by the penitent's humble admission of the violence
of her mental struggles to find something to say, the old
ecclesiastic, being firm in matters of discipline, read her a
whole chapter out of St. Frangois de Sales on the Duties of a
Woman in the World ; on the decent gaiety of the pious Chris-
tian female, and the duty of confining her austerities to her-
self ; a woman, according to this authority, ought to be amiable
in her home and to act in such a sort that her neighbor never
feels dull in her company. After this Mile. Cormon, with a
deep sense of duty, was anxious to obey her director at any
cost. He had bidden her to discourse agreeably, so every time
the conversation languished she felt the perspiration breaking
out over her with the violence of her exertions to find some-
thing to say which should stimulate the flagging interest. She
would come out with odd remarks at such times. Once she
revived, with some success, a discussion on the ubiquity of the
apostles (of which she understood not a syllable) by the un-
expected observation that "You cannot be in two places at
once unless you are a bird." With such conversational cues as
these, the lady had earned the title of "dear, good Mile.
Cormon" in her set, which phrase, in the mouth of local wits,
might be taken to mean that she was as ignorant as a carp,
and a bit of a "natural;" but there were plenty of people of
her own calibre to take the remark literally, and reply, "Oh
yes, Mile. Cormon is very good."

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 71

Sometimes (always in her desire to be agreeable to her
guests and fulfil her duties as a hostess) she asked such ab-
surd questions that everybody burst out laughing. She wanted
to know, for example, what the Government did with the taxes
which it had been receiving all these years; or how it was
that the Bible had not been printed in the time of Christ, see-
ing that it had been written by Moses. Altogether she was on
a par with the English country gentleman, and member
of the House of Commons, who made the famous speech in
which he said, "I am always hearing of Posterity; I should
very much like to know what Posterity has done for the
country."

On such occasions, the heroic Chevalier de Valois came to
the rescue, bringing up all the resources of his wit and tact
at the sight of the smiles exchanged by pitiless smatterers.
He loved to give to woman, did this elderly noble ; he lent his
wit to Mile. Cormon by coming to her assistance with a para-
dox, and covered her retreat so well, that sometimes it seemed
as if she had said nothing foolish. She once owned seriously
that she did not know the difference between an ox and a bull.
The enchanting Chevalier stopped the roars of laughter by
saying that oxen could never be more than uncles to the
bullocks. Another time, hearing much talk of cattle-breeding
and its difficulties — a topic which often comes up in conversa-
tion in the neighborhood of the superb du Pin stud — she so
far grasped the technicalities of horse breeding to ask, "Why,
if they wanted colts, they did not serve a mare twice a year."
The Chevalier drew down the laughter upon himself.

"It is quite possible," said he. The company pricked up
their ears.

"The fault lies with the naturalists," he continued; "they
have not found out how to breed mares that are less than
eleven months in foal."

Poor Mile. Cormon no more understood the meaning of the
words than the difference between the ox and the bull. The
Chevalier met with no gratitude for his pains ; his chivalrous
services were beyond the reach of the lady's comprehension.

£ THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

She saw that the conversation grew livelier ; she was relieved
to find that she was not so stupid as she imagined. A day
came at last when she settled down in her ignorance, like the
Due de Brancas ; and the hero of Le Distrait, it may be re-
membered, made himself so comfortable in the ditch after his
fall, that when the people came to pull him out, he asked what
they wanted with him. Since a somewhat recent period Mile.
Cormon had lost her fears. She brought out her conversa-
tional cues with a self-possession akin to that solemn manner
— the very coxcombry of stupidity — which accompanies the
fatuous utterances of British patriotism.

As she went with stately steps towards the terrace there-
fore, she was chewing the cud of reflection, seeking for some
question which should draw her uncle out of a silence
which always hurt her feelings ; she thought that he felt dull.

"Uncle," she began, hanging on his arm, and nestling joy-
ously close to him (for this was another of her make-believes,
"If I had a husband, I should do just so!" she thought) —
"Uncle, if everything on earth happens by the will of God,
there must be a reason for everything."

"Assuredly," the Abbe de Sponde answered gravely. He
loved his niece, and submitted with angelic patience to be torn
from his meditations.

"Then if I never marry at all, it will be because it is the
will of God?"

"Yes, my child."

"But still, as there is nothing to prevent me from marrying
to-morrow, my will perhaps might thwart the will of God ?"

"That might be so, if we really knew God's will," returned
the sub-prior of the Sorbonne. "Remark, my dear, that you
insert an if."

Poor Rose was bewildered. She had hoped to lead her
uncle to the subject of marriage by way of an argument ad
omnipotentem. But the naturally obtuse are wont to adopt
the remorseless logic of childhood, which is to say, they pre
ceed from the answer to another question, a method frequently
found embarrassing.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 73

"But, uncle," she persisted, "God cannot mean women never
to marry; for if He did, all of them ought to be either un-
married or married. Their lots are distributed unjustly."

"My child," said the good Abbe, "you are finding fault with
the Church, which teaches that celibacy is a more excellent
way to God."

"But if the Church was right, and everybody was a good
Catholic, there would soon be no more people, uncle."

"You are too ingenious, Rose ; there is no need to be so in-
genious to be happy."

Such words brought a smile of satisfaction to poor Rose's
lips and confirmed her in the good opinion which she began
to conceive of herself. Behold how the world, like our friends
and enemies, contributes to strengthen our faults. At this
moment guests began to arrive, and the conversation was in-
terrupted. On these high festival occasions, the disposition
of the rooms brought about little familiarities between the
servants and invited guests. Mariette saw the President of
the Tribunal, a triple expansion glutton, as he passed by her
kitchen.

"Oh, M. du Ronceret, I have been making cauliflower au
gratin on purpose for you, for mademoiselle knows how fond
you are of it. 'Mind you do not fail with it, Mariette/ 6he
said ; *M. le President is coming.' "

"Good Mile. Cormon," returned the man of law. "Mari-
ette, did you baste the cauliflowers with gravy instead of
stock? It is more savory." And the President did not dis-
dain to enter the council-chamber where Mariette ruled the
roast, nor to cast an epicure's eye over her preparations, and
give his opinion as a master of the craft.

"Good-day, madame," said Josette, addressing Mme. Gran-
son, who sedulously cultivated the waiting-woman. "Made-
moiselle has not forgotten you ; you are to have a dish of fish."

As for the Chevalier de Valois, he spoke to Mariette with
the jocularity of a great noble unbending to an inferior :

"Well, dear cordon bleu, I would give you the Cross of the
Legion of Honor if I could; tell me, is there any dainty
morsel for which one ought to save oneself ?"

74 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"Yes, yes, M. de Valois, a hare from the Prebaudet; it
weighed fourteen pounds !"

"That's a good girl," said the Chevalier, patting Josette on
the cheek with two fingers. "Ah! weighs fourteen pounds,
does it?"

Du Bousquier was not of the party. Mile. Cormon treated
him hardly, faithful to her system before described. In the
very bottom of her heart she felt an inexplicable drawing
towards this man of fifty, whom she had once refused. Some-
times she repented of that refusal, and yet she had a pre-
sentiment that she should marry him after all, and a dread of
him which forbade her to wish for the marriage. These ideas
stimulated her interest in du Bousquier. The Eepublican's
herculean proportions produced an effect upon her which she
would not admit to herself; and the Chevalier de Valois and
Mme. Granson, while they could not explain Mile. Cormon's
inconsistencies, had detected naive, furtive glances, sufficiently
clear in their significance to set them both on the watch to
ruin the hopes which du Bousquier clearly entertained in spite
of a first check.

Two guests kept the others waiting, but their official duties
excused them both. One was M. du Coudrai, registrar of
mortgages; the other, M. Choisnel, had once acted as land-
steward to the Marquis de Gordes. Choisnel was the notary
of the old noblesse, and received everywhere among them with
the distinction which his merits deserved ; he had besides a not
inconsiderable private fortune. When the two late comers ar-
rived,. Jacquelin, the man-servant, seeing them turn to go into
the drawing-room, came forward with, " 'They' are all in the
garden/'

The registrar of mortgages was one of the most amiable
men in the town. There were but two things against him —
he had married an old woman for her money in the first place,
and in the second it was his habit to perpetrate outrageous
puns, at which he was the first to laugh. But, doubtless, the
stomachs of the guests were growing impatient, for at first
sight he was hailed with that faint sigh which usually wel-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 73

comes last comers under such circumstances. Pending the
official announcement of dinner, the company strolled up and
down the terrace by the Brillante, looking out over the stream
with its bed of mosaic and its water-plants, at the so pictur-
esque details of the row of houses huddled together on the
opposite bank; the old-fashioned wooden balconies, the
tumble-down window sills, the balks of timber that shored
up a story projecting over the river, the cabinet-maker's work-
shop, the tiny gardens where odds and ends of clothing were
hanging out to dry. It was, in short, the poor quarter of a
country town, to which the near neighborhood of the water,
a weeping willow drooping over the bank, a rosebush or so,
and a few flowers, had lent an indescribable charm, worthy of
a landscape painter's brush.

The Chevalier meanwhile was narrowly watching the faces
of the guests. He knew that his firebrand had very success-
fully taken hold of the best coteries in the town ; but no one
spoke openly of Suzanne and du Bousquier and the great news
as yet. The art of distilling scandal is possessed by pro-
vincials in a supreme degree. It was felt that the time was
not yet ripe for open discussion of the strange event. Every
one was bound to go through a private rehearsal first. So it
was whispered:

"Have you heard ?"

"Yes."

"Du Bousquier?"

"And the fair Suzanne."

"Does Mile. Cormon know anything?"

"No."

"Ah!"

This was gossip piano, presently destined to swell into a
crescendo when they were ready to discuss the first dish of
scandal.

All of a sudden the Chevalier confronted Mme. Granson.
That lady had sported her green bonnet, trimmed with au-
riculas ; her face was beaming. Was she simply longing to
begin the concert ? Such news is as good as a gold-mine to be

76 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

worked in the monotonous lives of these people ; but the ob-
servant and uneasy Chevalier fancied that he read something
more in the good lady's expression — to wit, the exultation of
self-interest! At once he turned to look at Athanase, and
detected in his silence the signs of profound concentration of
some kind. In another moment the young man's glance at
Mile. Cormon's figure, which sufficiently resembled a pair of
regimental kettledrums, shot a sudden light across the Cheva-
lier's brain. By that gleam he could read the whole past.

"Egad !" he said to himself, "what a slap in the face I have
laid myself out to get !"

He went across to offer his arm to Mile. Cormon, so that he
might afterwards take her in to dinner. She regarded the
Chevalier with respectful esteem ; for, in truth, with his name
and position in the aristocratic constellations of the province,
he was one of the most brilliant ornaments of her salon. In
her heart of hearts, she had longed to be Mme. de Valois at
any time during the past twelve years. The name was like a
branch for the swarming thoughts of her brain to cling about
— he fulfilled ail her ideals as to the birth, quality, and ex-
ternals of an eligible man. But while the Chevalier de Valois
was the choice of heart and brain and social ambition, the
elderly ruin, curled though he was like a St. John of a proces-
sion-day, filled Mile. Cormon with dismay; the heiress saw
nothing but the noble ; the woman could not think of him as
a husband. The Chevalier's affectation of indifference to mar-
riage, and still more his unimpeachable character in a house-
ful of work-girls, had seriously injured him, contrary to his
own expectations. The man of quality, so clear-sighted in the
matter of the annuity, miscalculated on this subject; and
Mile. Cormon herself was not aware that her private reflec-
tions upon the too well-conducted Chevalier might have been
translated by the remark, "What a pity that he is not a little
bit of a rake !"

Students of human nature have remarked these leanings of
the saint towards the sinner, and wondered at a taste so little
in accordance, as they imagine, with Christian virtue. But, to

r TOWN

le; but t'
he read somethinj
rit, the exultation o
, at Athanas*
ad concentration o
\onng man's gla;,

resembled a pair o
light across the Cheva
could read the whole past.

p in the face I hav

to Mile. Cormon, so tl
n to dinner. She regards
for, in truth, with his
ostellations of the provinc(
-naments of her sale-:
(:d to be Mme. de Val<

ej*rs., The name was like

>k at Athanase

r brain to clii

fig

I he birth, quality, an

1 1 while the Chevalier de \

*art and brain and social ambition.

bough he was like a St. John of a pr

with dismay; the heiress

nan could not think of hi

^difference to mar-

able character in a house-

d seriously injured him, contrary to his

deulated on this subject;
her private re
ilier might have
'at a pity that he is not a little

'■ ffro«o loanin:.
at a taste so little
Christian virtue. But, to

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 71

go no further, what nobler destiny for a virtuous woman than
the task of cleansing, after the manner of charcoal, the turbid
waters of vice? How is it that nobody has seen that these
generous creatures, confined by their principles to strict con-
jugal fidelity, must naturally desire a mate of great practical
experience ? A reformed rake makes the best husband. And
so it came to pass that the poor spinster must sigh over the
chosen vessel, offered her as it were in two pieces. Heaven
alone could weld the Chevalier de Yalois and du Bousquier
in one.

If the significance of the few words exchanged between the
Chevalier and Mile. Cormon is to be properly understood, it is
necessary to put other matters before the reader. Two very
serious questions were dividing Alengon into two camps, and,
moreover, du Bousquier was mixed up in both affairs in some
mysterious way. The first of these debates concerned the cure.
He had taken the oath of allegiance in the time of the Revolu-
tion, and now was living down orthodox prejudices by setting
an example of the loftiest goodness. He was a Cheverus on a
smaller scale, and so much was he appreciated, that when he
died the whole town wept for him. Mile. Cormon and the
Abbe de Sponde belonged, however, to the minority, to the
Church sublime in its orthodoxy, a section which was to the
Court of Rome as the Ultras were shortly to be to the Court
of Louis XVIII. The Abbe, in particular, declined to recog-
nize the Church that had submitted to force and made terms
with the Constitutionnels. So the cure was never seen in the
salon of the Maison Cormon, and the sympathies of its fre-
quenters were with the officiating priest of St. Leonard's, the
aristocratic church in Alengon. Du Bousquier, that rabid Lib-
eral under a Royalist's skin, knew how necessary it is to find
standards to rally the discontented, who form, as it were, the
back-shop of every opposition, and therefore he had already
enlisted the sympathies of the trading classes for the cure.

Now for the second affair. The same blunt diplomatist was
the secret instigator of a scheme for building a theatre, an
idea which had only lately sprouted in Alengon. Du Bous-

78 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

quier's zealots knew not their Mahomet, but they were more
ardent in their defence of what they believed to be their own
plan. Athanase was one of the very hottest of the partisans
in favor of the theatre ; in the mayor's office for several days
past he had been pleading for the cause which all the younger
men had taken up.

To return to the Chevalier. He offered his arm to 3Ille.
Cormon, who thanked him with a radiant glance for this at-
tention. For all answer the Chevalier indicated Athanase by
a meaning look.

"Mademoiselle," he began, "as you have such well-balanced
judgment in matters of social convention, and as that young
man is related to you in some way "

"Very distantly," she broke in.

"Ought you not to use the influence which you possess with
him and his mother to prevent him from going utterly to the
bad? He is not very religious as it is; he defends that per-
jured priest ; but that is nothing. It is a much more serious
matter ; is he not plunging thoughtlessly into opposition with-
out realizing how his conduct may affect his prospects? He
is scheming to build this theatre; he is the dupe of that Ee-
publican in disguise, du Bousquier "

"Dear me, M. de Valois, his mother tells me that he is so
clever, and he has not a word to say for himself; he always
stands planted before you like a statute "

"Of limitations," cried the registrar. "I caught that fly-
ing.— I present my devoars to the Chevalier de Valois," he
added, saluting the latter with the exaggeration of Henri
Monnier as "Joseph Prudhomme," an admirable type of the
class to which M. du Coudrai belonged.

M. de Valois, in return, gave him the abbreviated patroniz-
ing nod of a noble standing on his dignity ; then he drew Mile.
Cormon further along the terrace by the distance of several
flower-pots, to make the registrar understand that he did not
wish to be overheard.

Then, lowering his voice, he bent to say in Mile. Cormon's
ear: "How can you expect that lads educated in these de-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 79

testable Imperial Lyceums should have any ideas? Great
ideas and a lofty love can only come of right courses and
nobleness of life. It is not difficult to foresee, from the look
of the poor fellow, that he will be weak in his intellect and
come to a miserable end. See how pale and haggard he
looks !"

"His mother says that he works far too hard," she replied
innocently. "He spends his nights, think of it! in reading
books and writing. What good can it possibly do a young
man's prospects to sit up writing at night ?"

"Why, it exhausts him/' said the Chevalier, trying to bring
the lady's thoughts back to the point, which was to disgust
her with Athanase. "The things that went on in those Im-
perial Lyceums were something really shocking."

"Oh yes," said the simple lady. "Did they not make them
walk out with drums in front? The masters had no more
religion than heathens; and they put them in uniform, poor
boys, exactly as if they had been soldiers. What notions !"

"And see what comes of it," continued the Chevalier, indi-
cating Athanase. "In my time, where was the young man
that could not look a pretty woman in the face? Now, he
lowers his eyes as soon as he sees you. That young man
alarms me, because I am interested in him. Tell him not to
intrigue with Bonapartists, as he is doing, to build this
theatre ; if these little youngsters do not raise an insurrection
and demand it (for insurrection and constitution, to my mind,
are two words for the same thing), the authorities will build
it. And tell his mother to look after him."

"Oh, she will not allow him to see these half-pay people or
to keep low company, I am sure. I will speak to him about
it," said Mile. Cormon; "he might lose his situation at the
mayor's office. And then what would they do, he and his
mother? It makes you shudder."

As M. de Talleyrand said of his wife, so said the Cheva-
lier within himself at that moment, as he looked at the lady :

"If there is a stupider woman, I should like to see her. On
the honor of a gentleman, if virtue makes a woman so stupid
vol. 7— 2S

80 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

as this, is it not a vice? And yet, what an adorable wife she
would make for a man of my age ! What principle ! What
ignorance of life !"

Please to bear in mind that these remarks were addressed
to the Princess Goritza during the manipulation of a pinch
of snuff.

"Mme. Granson felt instinctively that the Chevalier was
talking of Athanase. In her eagerness to know what he had
been saying, she followed Mile. Cormon, who walked up to
the young man in question, putting out six feet of dignity in
front: but at that very moment Jacquelin announced that
"Mademoiselle was served," and the mistress of the house shot
an appealing glance at the Chevalier. But the gallant reg-
istrar of mortgages was beginning to see a something in M. do
Valois' manner, a glimpse of the barrier which the noblesse
were about to raise between themselves and the bourgeoisie;
so, delighted with a chance to cut out the Chevalier, he crooked
his arm, and Mile. Cormon was obliged to take it. M. de
Valois, from motives of policy, fastened upon Mme. Granson.

"Mile. Cormon takes the liveliest interest in your dear
Athanase, my dear lady," he said, as they slowly followed in
the wake of the other guests, "but that interest is falling off
through your son's fault. He is lax and Liberal in his opin-
ions ; he is agitating for this theatre ; he is mixed up with the
Bonapartists ; he takes the part of the Constitutionnel cure.
This line of conduct may cost him his situation. You know
how carefully his Majesty's government is weeding the service.
If your dear Athanase is once cashiered, where will he find
employment ? He must not get into bad odor with the author-
ities."

"Oh, M. le Chevalier," cried the poor startled mother, "what
do I not owe you for telling me this ! You are right ; my boy
is a tool in the hands of a bad set ; I will open his eyes to his
position."

It was long since the Chevalier had sounded Athanase's
character at a glance. He saw in the depths of the young
man's nature the scarcely malleable material of Eepublican

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 81

convictions ; a lad at that age will sacrifice everything for such
ideas if he is smitten with the word Liberty, that so vague, so
little comprehended word which is like a standard of revolt
for those at the bottom of the wheel for whom revolt means
revenge. Athanase was sure to stick to his opinions, for he
had woven them, with his artist's sorrows and his embittered
views of the social framework, into his political creed. He
was ready to sacrifice his future at the outset for these
opinions, not knowing that he, like all men of real ability,
would have seen reason to modify them by the time he reached
the age of six-and-thirty, when a man has formed his own
conclusions of life, with its intricate relations and interde-
pendences. If Athanase was faithful to the opposition in
Alengon, he would fall into disgrace with Mile. Cormon. Thus
far the Chevalier saw clearly.

And so this little town, so peaceful in appearance, was to the
full as much agitated internally as any congress of diplomates,
when craft and guile and passion and self-interest are met
to discuss the weightiest questions between empire and em-
pire.

Meanwhile the guests gathered about the table were eating
their way through the first course as people eat in the prov-
inces, without a blush for an honest appetite; whereas, in
Paris, it would appear that our jaws are controlled by sump-
tuary edicts which deliberately set the laws of anatomy at de-
fiance. We eat with the tips of our teeth in Paris, we filch the
pleasures of the table, but in the provinces things are taken
more naturally; possibly existence centres a little too much
about the great and universal method of maintenance to which
God condemns all his creatures. It was at the end of the first
course that Mile. Cormon brought out the most celebrated of
all her conversational cues; it was talked of for two years
afterwards; it is quoted even now, indeed, in the sub-bour-
geois strata of Alencon whenever her marriage is under dis-
cussion. Over the last entree but one, the conversation waxed
lively and wordy, turning, as might have been expected, upon
the affair of the theatre and the cure. In the first enthusiasm

82 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

of Royalism in 1816, those extremists, who were afterwards
called les Jesuites du pays, were for expelling the Abb6
Francois from his cure. M. de Valois suspected du Bousquier
of supporting the priest and instigating the intrigues ; at any
rate, the noble Chevalier piled the burdens on du Bousquier's
back with his wonted skill ; and du Bousquier, being unrepre-
sented by counsel, was condemned and put in the pillory.
Among those present, Athanase was the only person sufficient-
ly frank to stand up for the absent, and he felt that he was not
in a position to bring out his ideas before these Alengon mag-
nates, of whose intellects he had the meanest opinion. Only
in the provinces nowadays will you find young men keeping
a respectful countenance before people of a certain age with-
out daring to have a fling at their elders or to contradict them
too flatly. To resume. On the advent of some delicious canards
aux olives, the conversation first decidedly flagged, and then
suddenly dropped dead. Mile. Cormon, emulous of her own
poultr}', invented another canard in her anxiety to defend du
Bousquier, who had been represented as an arch-eoncocter of
intrigue, and a man to set mountains fighting.

"For my own part," said she, "I thought that M. du Bous-
quier gave his whole attention to childish matters."

Under the circumstances, the epigram produced a tre-
mendous effect. Mile. Cormon had a great success; she
brought the Princess Goritza face downwards on the table.
The Chevalier, by no means expecting his Dulcinea to say
anything so much to the purpose, could find no words to ex-
press his admiration ; he applauded after the Italian fashion,
noiselessly, with the tips of his fingers.

"She is adorably witty," he said, turning to Mme. Granson.
"I have always said that she would unmask her batteries some
day."

"But when you know her very well, she is charming," said
the widow.

"All women, madame, have esprit when you know them
well."

When the Homeric laughter subsided, Mile. Cormon asked

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 83

for an explanation of her success. Then the chorus of scandal
grew to a height. Du Bousquier was transformed into a bach-
elor Pere Gigogne; it was he who filled the Foundling Hos-
pital ; the immorality of his life was laid bare at last ; it was
all of a piece with his Paris orgies, and so forth and so forth.
Led by the Chevalier de Valois, the cleverest of conductors
of this kind of orchestra, the overture was something mag-
nificent.

"I do not know/' said he, with much indulgence, "what
there could possibly be to prevent a du Bousquier from mar-
rying a Mademoiselle Suzanne whatever-it-is — what do you
call her ? — Suzette ! I only know the children by sight, though
I lodge with Mme. Lardot. If this Suzon is a tall, fine-look-
ing forward sort of girl with gray eyes, a slender figure, and
little feet — I have not paid much attention to these things,
but she seemed to me to be very insolent and very much
du Bousquier's superior in the matter of manners. Besides,
Suzanne has the nobility of beauty ; from that point of view,
she would certainly make a marriage beneath her. The Em-
peror Joseph, you know, had the curiosity to go to see the du
Barry at Luciennes. He offered her his arm; and when the
poor courtesan, overcome by such an honor, hesitated to take
it, 'Beauty is always a queen/ said the Emperor. Remark that
the Emperor Joseph was an Austrian German," added the
Chevalier; "but, believe me, that Germany, which we think
of as a very boorish country, is really a land of noble chivalry
and fine manners, especially towards Poland and Hungary,

where there are " Here the Chevalier broke off, fearing

to make an allusion to his own happy fortune in the past;
he only took up his snuff-box and confided the rest to the
Princess, who had smiled on him for thirty-six years.

"The speech was delicately considerate for Louis XV.," said
du Ronceret.

"But we are talking of the Emperor Joseph, I believe," re-
turned Mile. Cormon, with a little knowing air.

"Mademoiselle," said the Chevalier, seeing the wicked
glances exchanged by the President, the registrar, and the

S4 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

notary, "Mme. du Barry was Louis Quinze's Suzanne, a fact
known well enough to us scapegraces, but which young ladies
are not expected to know. Your ignorance shows that the
diamond is flawless. The corruptions of history have not so
much as touched you."

At this the Abbe de Sponde looked graciously upon M. de
Valois and bent his head in laudatory approval.

"Do you not know history, mademoiselle," asked the regis-
trar.

"If you muddle up Louis XV. and Suzanne, how can you
expect me to know your history ?" was Mile. Cormon's angelic
reply. She was so pleased ! The dish was empty and the con-
versation revived to such purpose that everybody was laughing
with their mouths full at her last observation.

"Poor young thing!" said the Abbe de Sponde. "When
once trouble comes, that love grown divine called charity is as
blind as the pagan love, and should see nothing of the causes
of the trouble. You are President of the Maternity Societ}',
Rose ; this child will need help ; it will not be easy for her to
find a husband."

"Poor child !" said Mile. Cormon.

"Is du Bousquier going to marry her, do you suppose ?"
asked the President of the Tribunal.

"It would be his duty to do so if he were a decent man,''
said Mme. Granson; "but, really, my dog has better notions
of decency "

"And yet Azor is a great forager," put in the registrar,
trying a joke this time as a change from a pun.

They were still talking of du Bousquier over the dessert.
He was the butt of uncounted playful jests, which grew more
and more thunder-charged under the influence of wine. Led
off by the registrar, they followed up one pun with another.
Du Bousquier's character was now ap-parent; he was not a
father of the church, nor a reverend father, nor yet a con-
script father, and so on and so on, till the Abbe de Sponde
said, "In any case, he is not a foster-father," with a gravity
Uiat checked the laughter.

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 85

"Nor a heavy father," added the Chevalier.

The Church and the aristocracy had descended into the
arena of word-play without loss of dignity.

"Hush!" said the registrar, "I can hear du Bousquier's
boots creaking; he is in over shoes over boots, and no mis-
take."

It nearly always happens that when a man's name is in
every one's mouth, he is the last to hear what is said of him ;
the whole town may be talking of him, slandering him or cry-
ing him down, and if he has no friends to repeat what other
people say of him, he is not likely to hear it. So the blame-
less du Bousquier, du Bousquier who would fain have been
guilty, who wished that Suzanne had not lied to him, was
supremely unconscious of all that was taking place. Nobody
had spoken to him of Suzanne's revelations ; for that matter,
everybody thought it indiscreet to ask questions about the
affair, when the man most concerned sometimes possesses se-
crets which compel him to keep silence. So when people ad-
journed for coffee to the drawing-room, where several evening
visitors were already assembled, du Bousquier wore an irre-
sistible and slightly fatuous air.

Mile. Cormon, counseled by confusion, dared not look
towards the terrible seducer. She took possession of Atha-
nase and administered a lecture, bringing out the oddest as-
sortment of the commonplaces of Royalist doctrines and edify-
ing truisms. As the unlucky poet had no snuff-box with a por-
trait of a princess on the lid to sustain him under the shower-
bath of foolish utterances, it was with a vacant expression that
he heard his adored lady. His eyes were fixed on that enor-
mous bust, which maintained the absolute repose character-
istic of great masses. Desire wrought a kind of intoxication
in him. The old maid's thin, shrill voice became low music
for his ears ; her platitudes were fraught with ideas.

Love is an utterer of false coin ; he is always at work trans-
forming common copper into gold louis ; sometimes, also, he
makes his seeming halfpence of fine gold.

"Well, Athanase, will you promise me ?"

80 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

The final phrase struck on the young man's ear; he woke
with a start from a blissful dream.

"What, mademoiselle ?" returned he.

Mile. Cormon rose abruptly and glanced across at du Bous-
quier. At that moment he looked like the brawny fabulous
deity whose likeness you behold upon Eepublican three-franc
pieces. She went over to Mme. Granson and said in a confi-
dential tone:

"Your son is weak in his intellect, my poor friend. That
lyceum has been the ruin of him," she added, recollecting how
the Chevalier de Yalois had insisted on the bad education
given in those institutions.

Here was a thunderbolt! Poor Athanase had had his
chance of flinging fire upon the dried stems heaped up in the
old maid's heart, and he had not known it ! If he had but
listened to her, he might have made her understand; for in
Mile. Cormon's present highly-wrought mood a word would
have been enough, but the very force of the stupefying crav-
ings of love-sick youth had spoiled his chances ; so sometimes a
child full of life kills himself through ignorance.

"What can you have been saying to Mile. Cormon ?" asked
his mother.

"Nothing."

"Nothing? — I will have this cleared up," she said, and
put off serious business to the morrow; du Bousquier was
hopelessly lost, she thought, and the speech troubled her very
little.

Soon the four card-tables received their complement of
players. Four persons sat down to piquet, the most expensive
amusement of the evening, over which a good deal of money
changed hands. M. Choisnel, the attorney for the crown, and
a couple of ladies went to the red-lacquered cabinet for a game
of tric-trac. The candles in the wall-sconces were lighted,
and then the flower of Mile. Cormon's set blossomed out about
the fire, on the settees, and about the tables. Each new couple,
on entering the room, made the same remark to Mile. Cormon,
"So you are going to the Prebaudet to-morrow?"

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 87

"Yes, I really must," she said, in answer to each.

All through the evening the hostess wore a preoccupied air.
Mme. Granson was the first to see that she was not at all like
herself. Mile. Cormon was thinking.

"What are you thinking about, cousin?" Mme. Gran-
son asked at last, finding her sitting in the boudoir.

"I am thinking of that poor girl. Am I not patroness of
the Maternity Society? I will go now to find ten crowns for

you."

"Ten crowns!" exclaimed Mme. Granson. "Why, you have
never given so much to any one before !"

"But, my dear, it is so natural to have a child."

This improper cry from the heart struck the treasurer of
the Maternity Society dumb from sheer astonishment. Du
Bousquier had actually gone up in Mile. Cormon's opinion !

"Really," began Mme. Granson, "du Bousquier is not
merely a monster — he is a villain into the bargain. When a
man has spoiled somebody else's life, it is his duty surely to
make amends. It should be his part rather than ours to res-
cue this young person; and when all comes to all, she is a
bad girl, it seems to me, for there are better men in Alengon
than that cynic of a du Bousquier. A girl must be shameless
indeed to have anything to do with him."

"Cynic? Your son, dear, teaches you Latin words that are
quite beyond me. Certainly I do not want to make excuses
for M. du Bousquier; but explain to me why it is immoral
for a woman to prefer one man to another ?"

"Dear cousin, suppose now that you were to marry my
Athanase; there would be nothing but what was very natural
in that. He is young and good-looking ; he has a future before
him; Alencon will be proud of him some day. But — every
one would think that you took such a young man as your
husband for the sake of greater conjugal felicity. Slanderous
tongues would say that you were making a sufficient provision
of bliss for yourself. There would be jealous women to bring
charges of depravity against you. But what would it matter
to you? You would be dearly loved — loved sincerely. If

88 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Athanase seemed to you to be weak of intellect, my dear, it is
because he has too many ideas. Extremes meet. He is as clean
in his life as a girl of fifteen ; he has not wallowed in the pol-
lutions of Paris. . . . Well, now, change the terms, as
my poor husband used to say. It is relatively just the same
situation as du Bousquier's and Suzanne's. But what would
be slander in your case is true in every way of du Bousquier.
Now do you understand ?"

"No more than if you were talking Greek," said Kose
Cormon, opening wide eyes and exerting all the powers of her
understanding.

"Well, then, cousin, since one must put dots on all the t's,
it is quite out of the question that Suzanne should love du
Bousquier. And when the heart counts for nothing in such
an affair "

"Why, really, cousin, how should people love if not with
their hearts ?"

At this Mme. Granson thought within herself, as the Cheva-
lier had thought :

"The poor cousin is too innocent by far. This goes beyond

the permissible " Aloud she said, "Dear girl, it seems to

me that a child is not conceived of spirit alone/'

"Why, yes, dear, for the Holy Virgin "

"But, my dear, good girl, du Bousquier is not the Holy
Ghost."

"That is true," returned the spinster ; "he is a man — a man
dangerous enough for his friends to recommend him strongly
to marry."

"You, cousin, might bring that about "

"Oh, how?" cried the spinster, with a glow of Christian!
charity.

"Decline to receive him until he takes a wife. For the sake;
of religion and morality, you ought to make an example of'
him under the circumstances."

"We will talk of this again, dear Mme. Granson, when l|
come back from the Prebaudet. I will ask advice of my unclei
and the Abbe* Couturier," and Mile. Cormon went back toi

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 89

the large drawing-room. The liveliest hour of the evening
had begun.

The lights, the groups of well-dressed women, the serious
and magisterial air of the assembly, filled Mile. Cormon with
pride in the aristocratic appearance of the rooms, a pride in
which her guests all shared. There were plenty of people who
thought that the finest company of Paris itself was no finer.
At that moment du Bousquier, playing a rubber with M. de
Valois and two elderly ladies, Mme. du Coudrai and Mme. du
Eonceret, was the object of suppressed curiosity. Several
women came up on the pretext of watching the game, and
gave him such odd, albeit furtive, glances that the old bach-
elor at last began to think that there must be something amiss
with his appearance.

"Can it be that my toupet is askew?" he asked himself.
And he felt that all-absorbing uneasiness to which the elderly
bachelor is peculiarly subject. A blunder gave him an excuse
for leaving the table at the end of the seventh rubber.

"I cannot touch a card but I lose," he said ; "I am decidedly
too unlucky at cards."

"You are lucky in other respects," said the Chevalier, with
a knowing look. Naturally, the joke made the round of the
room, and every one exclaimed over the exquisite breeding
shown by the Prince Talleyrand of Alengon.

"There is no one like M. de Valois for saying such things,"
said the niece of the cure of St. Leonard's.

Du Bousquier went up to the narrow mirror above "The
Deserter," but he could detect nothing unusual.

Towards ten o'clock, after innumerable repetitions of the
same phrase with every possible variation, the long ante-
chamber began to fill with visitors preparing to embark ; Mile.
Cormon convoying a few favored guests as far as the perron
for a farewell embrace. Knots of guests took their departure,
some in the direction of the Brittany road and the chateau,
and others turning toward the quarter by the Sarthe. And
then began the exchange of remarks with which the streets
had echoed at the same hour for a score of years. There was
the inevitable, "Mile. Cormon looked very well this evening."

90 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"Mile. Corinon ? She looked strange, I thought."

"How the Abbe stoops, poor man! And how he goes to
sleep — did you see? He never knows where the cards are
now ; his mind wanders."

"We shall be very sorry to lose him."

"It is a fine night. We shall have a fine day to-morrow."

"Fine weather for the apples to set."

"You beat us to-night; you always do when M. de Valois
is your partner."

"Then how much did he win ?"

"To-night ? Why, he won three or four francs. He never )
loses."

"Faith, no. There are three hundred and sixty-five days in
the year, you know; at that rate, whist is as good as a farm:
for him."

"Oh ! what bad luck we had to-night !"

"You are very fortunate, monsieur and madame, here you1
are at your own doorstep, while we have half the town to.
cross."

"I do not pity you ; you could keep a carriage if you liked,'
you need not go afoot."

"Ah! monsieur, we have a daughter to marry (that means
one wheel), and a son to keep in Paris, and that takes the
other."

"Are you still determined to make a magistrate of him ?"

"What can one do? You must do something with a boy,,
and besides, it is no disgrace to serve the King."

Sometimes a discussion on cider or flax was continued on
the way, the very same things being said at the same season
year after year. If any observer of human nature had lived
in that particular street, their conversation would have sup-
plied him with an almanac. At this moment, however, the
talk was of a decidedly Rabelaisian turn; for du Bousquier,
walking on ahead by himself, was humming the well-known
tune "Femme sensible, entends-tu le ramage f without a sus-
picion of its appropriateness. Some of the party held that du
Bousquier was uncommonly long-headed, and that people

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 91

judged him unjustly. President du Eonceret inclined towards
this view since he had been confirmed in his post by a new
royal decree. The rest regarded the forage-contractor as a
dangerous man of lax morals, of whom anything might be ex-
pected. In the provinces, as in Paris, public men are very
much in the position of the statue in Addison's ingenious
fable. The statue was erected at a place where four roads
met ; two cavaliers coming up on opposite sides declared, the
one that it was white, the other that it was black, until they
came to blows, and both of them lying on the ground discov-
ered that it was black on one side and white on the other,
while a third cavalier coming up to their assistance affirmed
that it was red.

When the Chevalier de Valois reached home, he said to
himself: "It is time to spread a report that I am going to
marry Mile. Cormon. The news shall come from the d'Es-
grignon's salon ; it shall go straight to the Bishop's palace at
Seez and come back through one of the vicars-general to the
cure of St. Leonard's. He will not fail to tell the Abbe
Couturier, and in this way Mile. Cormon will receive the shot
well under the water-line. The old Marquis d'Esgrignon is
sure to ask the Abbe de Sponde to dinner to put a stop to gos-
sip which might injure Mile. Cormon if I fail to come for-
ward ; or me, if she refuses me. The Abbe shall be well and
duly entangled; and after a call from Mile, de Gordes, in
the course of which the grandeur and the prospects of the alli-
ance will be put before Mile. Cormon, she is not likely to hold
out. The Abbe will leave her more than a hundred thousand
crowns; and as for her, she must have put by more than a
hundred thousand livres by this time ; she has her house, the
Prebaudet, and some fifteen thousand livres per annum. One
word to my friend the Comte de Fontaine, and I am Mayor
of Alengon, and deputy ; then, once seated on the right-hand
benches, the way to a peerage is cleared by a well-timed cry
of 'Cloture,' or 'Order/ "

When Mme. Granson reached home, she had a warm ex-
planation with her son. He could not be made to understand

92 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

the connection between his political opinions and his love.
It was the first quarrel which had troubled the peace of the
poor little household.

Next morning, at nine o'clock, Mile. Cormon, packed into
the cariole with Josette by her side, drove up the Eue Saint-
Blaise on her way to the Prebaudet, looking like a pyramid
above an ocean of packages. And the event which was to
surprise her there and hasten on her marriage was unseen as
yet by Mme. Granson, or du Bousquier, or M. de Valois, or by
Mile. Cormon herself. Chance is the greatest artist of all.

On the morrow of mademoiselle's arrival at the Prebaudet,
she was very harmlessly engaged in taking her eight o'clock
breakfast, while she listened to the reports of her bailiff and
gardener, when Jacquelin, in a great flurry, burst into the
dining-room.

"Mademoiselle," cried he, "M. l'Abbe has sent an express
messenger to you; that boy of Mother Grosmort's has come
with a letter. The lad left Alencon before daybreak, and yet
here he is ! He came almost as fast as Penelope. Ought he
to have a glass of wine ?"

"What can have happened, Josette ? Can uncle be "

"He would not have written if he was," said the woman,
guessing her mistress' fears.

Mile. Cormon glanced over the first few lines.

"Quick ! quick !" she cried. "Tell Jacquelin to put Penel-
ope in. — Get ready, child, have everything packed in half an
hour, we are going back to town," she added, turning to
Josette.

"Jacquelin !" called Josette, excited by the expression of
Mile. Cormon's face. Jacquelin on receiving his orders came
back to the house to expostulate.

"But, mademoiselle, Penelope has only just been fed."

"Eh! what does that matter to me? I want to start this
moment."

"But, mademoiselle, it is going to rain."

"Verv well. We shall be wet through."

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 93

"The house is on fire," muttered Josette, vexed because her
mistress said nothing, but read her letter through to the end,
and then began again at the beginning.

"Just finish your coffee at any rate. Don't upset yourself !
See how red you are in the face."

"Red in the face, Josette !" exclaimed Mile. Cormon, going
up to the mirror; and as the quick-silvered sheet had come
away from the glass, she beheld her countenance doubly dis-
torted. "Oh, dear !" she thought, "I shall look ugly !— Come,
come, Josette, child, help me to dress. I want to be ready be-
fore Jacquelin puts Penelope in. If you cannot put all the
things into the chaise, I would rather leave them here than
lose a minute."

If you have fully comprehended the degree of monomania
to which Mile. Cormon had been driven by her desire to marry,
you will share her excitement. Her worthy uncle informed
her that M. de Troisville, a retired soldier from the Russian
service, the grandson of one of his best friends, wishing to
settle down in Alencon, had asked for his hospitality for the
sake of the Abbe's old friendship with the mayor, his grand-
father, the Vicomte de Troisville of the reign of Louis XV.
M. de Sponde, in alarm, begged his niece to come home at
once to help him to entertain the guest and to do the honors
of the house ; for as there had been some delay in forwarding
the letter, M. de Troisville might be expected to drop in upon
him that very evening.

How was it possible after reading that letter to give any
attention to affairs at the Prebaudet? The tenant and the
bailiff, beholding their mistress' dismay, lay low and waited
for orders. When they stopped her passage to ask for in-
structions, Mile. Cormon, the despotic old maid, who saw
to everything herself at the Prebaudet, answered them with an
"As you please," which struck them dumb with amazement.
This was the mistress who carried administrative zeal to such
lengths that she counted the fruit and entered it under head-
ings, so that she could regulate the consumption by the quan-
tity of each sort !

04 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"I must be dreaming, I think/' said Josette, when she saw
her mistress flying upstairs like some elephant on which God
should have bestowed wings.

In a little while, in spite of the pelting rain, mademoiselle
was driving away from the Prebaudet, leaving her people to
have things all their own way. Jacquelin dared not take it
upon himself to drive the placid Penelope any faster than her
usual jog-trot pace ; and the old mare, something like the fair
queen after whom she was named, seemed to take a step back
for every step forward. Beholding this, mademoiselle bade
Jacquelin, in a vinegar voice, to urge the poor astonished
beast to a gallop, and to use the whip if necessary, so ap-
palling was the thought that M. de Troisvilie might arrive be-
fore the house was ready for him. A grandson of an old
friend of her uncle's could not be much over forty, she
thought ; a military man must infallibly be a bachelor. She
vowed inwardly that, with her uncle's help, M. de Troisvilie
should not depart in the estate in which he entered the
Maison Cormon. Penelope galloped; but mademoiselle,
absorbed in dresses and dreams of a wedding night, told
Jacquelin again and again that he was standing still. She
fidgeted in her seat, without vouchsafing any answer to
Josette's questions, and talked to herself as if she were re-
volving mighty matters in her mind.

At last the cariole turned into the long street of Alengon,
known as the Eue Saint-Blaise if you come in on the side
of Mortagne, the Eue de la Porte de Seez by the time you
reach the sign of the Three Moors, and lastly as the Eue du
Bercail, when it finally debouches into the highroad into
Brittany. If Mile. Cormon's departure for the Prebaudet
made a great noise in Alengon, anybody can imagine the
hubbub caused by her return on the following day, with the
driving rain lashing her face. Everybody remarked
Penelope's furious pace, Jacquelin's sly looks, the earliness
of the hour, the bundles piled up topsy-turvy, the lively con-
versation between mistress and maid, and, more than all
things, the impatience of the party.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 95

The Troisville estates lay between Alencon and Mortagne.
Josette, therefore, knew about the different branches of the
family. A word let fall by her mistress just as they reached
the pave of Alengon put Josette in possession of the facts,
and a discussion sprang up, in the course of which the two
women settled between themselves that the e-ipoctcd guest
must be a man of forty or forty-two, a bachelor, neither rich
nor poor. Mademoiselle saw herself Vicomtesse de Trois-
ville.

"And here is uncle telling me nothing, knowing nothing,
and wanting to know nothing ! Oh, so like uncle ! He would
forget his nose if it was not fastened to his face."

Have you not noticed how mature spinsters, under these
circumstances, grow as intelligent, fierce, bold, and full of
promises as a Richard III. ? To them, as to clerics in liquor,
nothing is sacred.

In one moment, from the upper end of the Rue Saint-Blaise
to the Porte de Seez, the town of Alengon heard of Mile.
Cormon's return with aggravating circumstances, heard with
a mighty perturbation of its vitals and trouble of the organs
of life public and domestic. Cook-maids, shopkeepers, and
passers-by carried the news from door to door ; then, without
delay, it circulated in the upper spheres, and almost simulta-
neously the words, "Mile. Cormon has come back," exploded
like a bomb in every house.

Meanwhile Jacquelin climbed down from his wooden bench
in front, polished by some process unknown to cabinet-makers,
and with his own hands opened the great gates with the
rounded tops. They were closed in Mile. Cormon's absence
as a sign of mourning; for when she went away her house
was shut up, and the faithful took it in turn to show
hospitality to the Abbe de Sponde. (M. de Valois used to
pay his debt by an invitation to dine at the Marquis
d'Esgrignon's. ) Jacquelin gave the familiar call to Penelope
standing in the middle of the road; and the animal, ac-
customed to this manoeuvre, turned into the courtyard, steer-
ing clear of the flower-bed, till Jacquelin took the bridle and
vol. 7—29

96 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

walked round with the chaise to the steps before the
door.

"Mariette!" called Mile. Cormon.

"Mademoiselle?" returned Mariette, engaged in shutting
the gates.

"Has the gentleman come?"

"No, mademoiselle."

"And is my uncle here?"

"He is at the church, mademoiselle."

Jacquelin and Josette were standing on the lowest step of
the flight, holding out their hands to steady their mistress'
descent from the cariole; she, meanwhile, had hoisted herself
upon the shaft, and was clutching at the curtains, before
springing down into their arms. It was two years since
she had dared to trust herself upon the iron step of double
strength, secured to the shaft by a fearfully made contriv-
ance with huge bolts.

From the height of the steps, mademoiselle surveyed her
courtyard with an air of satisfaction.

"There, there, Mariette, let the great gate alone and come
here."

"There is something up," Jacquelin said to Mariette as she
came past the chaise.

"Let us see now, child, what is there in the house?" said
Mile. Cormon, collapsing on the bench in the long ante-
chamber as if she were exhausted.

"Just nothing at all," replied Mariette, hands on hips.
"Mademoiselle knows quite well that M. l'Abbe always dines
out when she is not at home; yesterday I went to bring him
back from Mile. Armande's."

"Then where is he?"

"M. l'Abbe? He is gone to church; he will not be back
till three o'clock."

"Uncle thinks of nothing! Why couldn't he have sent
you to market ? Go down now, Mariette, and, without throw-
ing money away, spare for nothing, get the best, finest, and
daintiest of everything. Go to the coach office and ask where

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 97

people send orders for pates. And I want cray-fish from the
brooks along the Brillante. What time is it ?"

"Nine o'clock all but a quarter."

"Oh dear, oh dear; don't lose any time in chattering,
Mariette. The visitor my uncle is expecting may come at any
moment; pretty figures we should cut if he comes to break-
fast."

Mariette, turning round, saw Penelope in a lather, and
gave Jacquelin a glance which said, "Mademoiselle means to
put her hand on a husband this time."

Mile. Cormon turned to her housemaid. "Now, it is our
turn, Josette; we must make arrangements for M. de Trois-
ville to sleep here to-night."

How gladly those words were uttered ! "We must arrange
for M. de Troisville" (pronounced Treville) "to sleep here
to-night !" How much lay in those few words ! Hope
poured like a flood through the old maid's soul.

"Will you put him in the green chamber ?"

"The Bishop's room? No," said mademoiselle, "it is too
near mine. It is very well for his Lordship, a holy man."

"Give him your uncle's room."

"It looks so bare ; it would not do."

"Lord, mademoiselle, you could have a bed put up in the
boudoir in a brace of shakes; there is a fireplace there.
Moreau will be sure to find a bedstead in his warehouse that
will match the hangings as nearly as possible."

"You are right, Josette. Very well ; run round to Moreau's
and ask his advice about everything necessary; I give you
authority. If the bed, M. de Troisville's bed, can be set up by
this evening, so that M. de Troisville shall notice nothing,
supposing that M. de Troisville should happen to come in
while Moreau is here, I am quite willing. If Moreau can-
not promise that, M. de Troisville shall sleep in the green
chamber, although M. de Troisville will be very near me."

Josette departed ; her mistress called her back.

"Tell Jacquelin all about it," she exclaimed in a stern and
awful voice; "let him go to Moreau. How about my dress?

08 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Suppose M. de Troisville came and caught me like this, with-
out uncle here to receive him! — Oh, uncle! uncle! — Come
Josette, you shall help me to dress."

"But how about Penelope ?" the woman began imprudently.
Mile. Cormon's eyes shot sparks for the first and last time in
her life.

"It is always Penelope! Penelope this, Penelope that!
Is Penelope mistress here?"

"She is all of a lather, and she has not been fed."

"Eh ! and if she dies, let her die ! " cried Mile. Cormon

— "so long as I am married," she added in her own mind.

Josette stood stockstill a moment in amazement, such a
remark was tantamount to murder; then, at a sign from her
mistress, she dashed headlong down the steps into the yard.

"Mademoiselle is possessed, Jacquelin !" were Josette's first
words.

And in this way, everything that occurred throughout the
day led up to the great climax which was to change the whole
course of Mile. Cormon's life. The town was already turned
upside down by five aggravating circumstances which at-
tended the lady's sudden return, to wit — the pouring rain;
Penelope's panting pace and sunk flanks covered with foam;
the earliness of the hour; the untidy bundles; and the
spinster's strange, sacred looks. But when Mariette invaded
the market to carry off everything that she could lay her
hands on; when Jacquelin went to inquire for a bedstead of
the principal upholsterer in the Eue Porte de Seez, close by
the church ; here, indeed, was material on which to build the
gravest conjecture ! The strange event was discussed on the
Parade and the Promenade; every one was full of it, not ex-
cepting Mile. Armande, on whom the Chevalier de Valois hap-
pened to be calling at the time.

Only two days ago Alengon had been stirred to its depths
by occurrences of such capital importance, that worthy
matrons were still exclaiming that it was like the end of the
world ! And now, this last news was summed up in all houses
by the inquiry, "What can be happening at the Cormons' ?"

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 90

The Abbe de Sponde, skilfully questioned when he emerged
from St. Leonard's to take a walk with the Abbe Couturier
along the Parade, made reply in the simplicity of his heart,
to the effect that he expected a visit from the Vicomte de
Troisville, who had been in the Eussian service during the
Emigration, and now was coming back to settle in Alengon.
A kind of labial telegraph, at work that afternoon between
two and five o'clock, informed all the inhabitants of Alengon
that Mile. Cormon at last had found herself a husband by
advertisement. She was going to marry the Vicomte de
Troisville. Some said that "Moreau was at work on a bed-
stead already." In some places the bed was six feet long.
It was only four feet at Mme. Granson's house in the Eue du
Bercail. At President du Eonceret's, where du Bousquier
was dining, it dwindled into a sofa. The tradespeople said
that it cost eleven hundred francs. It was generally thought
that this was like counting your chickens before they were
hatched.

Further away, it was said that the price of carp had gone
up. Mariette had swooped down upon the market and
created a general scarcity. Penelope had dropped down at
the upper end of the Eue Saint-Blaise ; the death was called
in question at the receiver-general's ; nevertheless at the pre-
fecture it was known for a fact that the animal fell dead
just as she turned in at the gate of the Hotel Cormon, so
swiftly had the old maid come down upon her prey. The
saddler at the corner of the Eue de Seez, in his anxiety to
know the truth about Penelope, was hardy enough to call in
to ask if anything had happened to Mile. Cormon's chaise.
Then from the utmost end of the Eue Saint-Blaise, to the
furthermost parts of the Eue du Bercail, it was known that,
thanks to Jacquelin's care, Penelope, dumb victim of her
mistress' intemperate haste, was still alive, but she seemed
to be in a bad way.

All along the Brittany road the Vicomte de Troisville was
a penniless younger son, for the domains of Perche belonged
to the Marquis of that ilk, a peer of France with two children.

100 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

The match was a lucky thing for an impoverished emigre;
as for the Vicomte himself, that was Mile. Cormon's affair.
Altogether the match received the approval of the aristocratic
section on the Brittany road; Mile. Cormon could not have
put her fortune to a better use.

Among the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, the Yicomte de
Troisville was a Eussian general that had borne arms against
France. He was bringing back a large fortune made at the
court of St. Petersburg. He was a "foreigner," one of the
"Allies" detested by the Liberals. The Abbe de Sponde had
manoeuvred the match on the sly. Every person who had
any shadow of a right of entrance to Mile. Cormon's drawing-
room vowed to be there that night.

While the excitement went through the town, and all but
put Suzanne out of people's heads, Mile. Cormon herself was
not less excited; she felt as she had never felt before. She
looked round the drawing-room, the boudoir, the cabinet, the
dining-room, and a dreadful apprehension seized upon her.
Some mocking demon seemed to show her the old-fashioned
splendor in a new light ; the beautiful furniture, admired ever
since she was a child, was suspected, nay, convicted, of being
out of date. She was shaken, in fact, by the dread that
catches almost every author by the throat when he begins to
read his own work aloud to some exigent or jaded critic. Be-
fore he began, it was perfect in his eyes ; now the novel situa-
tions are stale; the finest periods turned with such secret
relish are turgid or halting; the metaphors are mixed or
grotesque ; his sins stare him in the face. Even so, poor Mile.
Cormon shivered to think of the smile on M. de Troisville's
lips when he looked round that salon, which looked like a
Bishop's drawing-room, unchanged for one possessor after
another. She dreaded his cool survey of the ancient dining-
room ; in short, she was afraid that the picture might look the
older for the ancient frame. How if all these old things
should tinge her with their age? The bare thought of it
made her flesh creep. At that moment she would have given
one-fourth of her savings for the power of renovating her

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 101

house at a stroke of a magic wand. Where is the general so
conceited that he will not shudder on the eve of an action?
She, poor thing, was between an Austerlitz and a Water-
loo.

"Mme. la Vicomtesse de Troisville," she said to herself,
"what a fine name ! Our estates will pass to a good house,
at any rate."

Her excitement fretted her. It sent a thrill through every
fibre of every nerve to the least of the ramifications and the
papillae so well wadded with flesh. Hope tingling in her
veins set all the blood in her body in circulation. She felt
capable, if need was, of conversing with M. de Trois-
ville.

Of the activity with which Josette, Mariette, Jacquelin,
Moreau, and his assistants set about their work, it is needless
to speak. Ants rescuing their eggs could not have been busier
than they. Everything, kept so neat and clean with daily
care, was starched and ironed, scrubbed, washed, and polished.
The best china saw the light. Linen damask cloths and
serviettes docketed A B C D emerged from the depths where
they lay shrouded in triple wrappings and defended by
bristling rows of pins. The rarest shelves of that oak-bound
library were made to give account of their contents; and
finally, mademoiselle offered up three bottles of liqueurs to
the coming guest, three bottles bearing the label of the most
famous distiller of over-sea — Mme. Amphoux, name dear to
connoisseurs.

Mile. Cormon was ready for battle, thanks to the devo-
tion of her lieutenants. The munitions of war, the heavy
artillery of the kitchen, the batteries of the pantry, the
victuals, provisions for the attack, and body of reserves, had
all been brought up in array. Orders were issued to Jacque-
lin, Mariette, and Josette to wear their best clothes. The
garden was raked over. Mademoiselle only regretted that
she could not come to an understanding with the night-
ingales in the trees, that they might warble their sweetest
songs for the occasion. At length, at four o'clock, just as

102 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

the Abbe" came in, and mademoiselle was beginning to think
that she had brought out her daintiest linen and china and
made ready the most exquisite of dinners in vain, the crack
of a postilion's whip sounded outside in the Val-Noble.

"It is he!" she thought, and the lash of the whip struck her
in the heart.

And indeed, heralded by all this tittle-tattle, a certain post-
chaise, with a single gentleman inside it, had made such a
prodigious sensation as it drove down the Eue Saint-Blaise
and turned into the Eue du Cours, that several small urchins
and older persons gave chase to the vehicle, and now were
standing in a group about the gateway of the Hotel Cormon
to watch the postilion drive in. Jacquelin, feeling that his
own marriage was in the wind, had also heard the crack of'
the whip, and was out in the yard to throw open the gates. ;
The postilion (an acquaintance) was on his mettle, he turned |
the corner to admiration, and came to a stand before the :
flight of steps. And, as you can understand, he did not goi
until Jacquelin had duly and properly made him tipsy.

The Abbe came out to meet his guest, and in a trice thei
chaise was despoiled of its occupant, robbers in a hurry could \
not have done their work more nimbly; then the chaise was;
put into the coach-house, the great door was closed, and in
a few minutes there was not a sign of M. de Troisville's ar-
rival. Never did two chemicals combine with a greater alac-
rity than that displa}^ed by the house of Cormon to absorb the!
Vicomte de Troisville. As for mademoiselle, if she had beenj
a lizard caught by a shepherd, her heart could not have beati
faster. She sat heroically in her low chair by the fireside;
Josette threw open the door, and the Vicomte de Troisville,-,
followed by the Abbe de Sponde, appeared before her.

"This is M. le Vicomte de Troisville, niece, a grandson of
an old school-fellow of mine. — M. de Troisville, my niece,
Mile. Cormon."

"Dear uncle, how nicely he puts it," thought Rose Marie
Victoire.

The Vicomte de Troisville, to describe him in a few words,

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 103

was a du Bousquier of noble family. Between the two men
there was just that difference which separates the gentle-
man from the ordinary man. If they had been standing side
by side, even the most furious Kadical could not have denied
the signs of race about the Vicomte. There was all the dis-
tinction of refinement about his strength, his figure had
lost nothing of its magnificent dignity. Blue-eyed,
dark-haired, and olive-skinned, he could not have been more
than six-and-forty. You might have thought him a hand-
some Spaniard preserved in Russian ice. His manner, gait,
and bearing, and everything about him, suggested a diplomate,
and a diplomate that has seen Europe. He looked like a
gentleman in his traveling dress.

M. de Troisville seemed to be tired. The Abbe rose to
conduct him to his room, and was overcome with astonishment
when Rose opened the door of the boudoir, now transformed
into a bedroom. Then uncle and niece left the noble visitor
leisure to attend to his toilet with the help of Jacquelin, who
brought him all the luggage which he needed. While M. de
Troisville was dressing, they walked on the terrace by the
Brillante. The Abbe, by a strange chance, was more absent-
minded than usual, and Mile. Cormon no less preoccupied, so
they paced to and fro in silence. Never in her life had Mile.
Cormon seen so attractive a man as this Olympian Vicomte.
She could not say to herself, like a German girl, "I have found
my Ideal I" but she felt that she was in love from head to
foot. "The very thing for me," she thought. On a sudden
she fled to Mariette, to know whether dinner could be put
back a little without serious injury.

"Uncle, this M. de Troisville is very pleasant/' she said
when she came back again.

"Why, my girl, he has not said a word as yet," returned
the Abbe, laughing.

"But one can tell by his general appearance. Is he a
bachelor ?"

"I know nothing about it," replied her uncle, his thoughts
full of that afternoon's discussion with the Abbe Couturier

104 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COtJNTRY TOWN

on Divine Grace. "M. de Troisville said in his letter that
he wanted to buy a house here. — If he were married, he
would not have come alone/' he added carelessly. It never en-
tered his head that his niece could think of marriage for her-
self.

"Is he rich?"

"He is the younger son of a younger branch. His grand-
father held a major's commission, but this young man's
father made a foolish marriage."

"Young man !" repeated his niece. "Why, he is quite five-
and-forty, uncle, it seems to me." She felt an uncontrol-
lable desire to compare his age with hers.

"Yes," said the Abbe. "But to a poor priest at seventy a
man of forty seems young, Rose."

By this time all Alengon knew that M. le Vicomte de Trois-
ville had arrived at the Hotel Cormon.

The visitor very soon rejoined his host and hostess, and be
gan to admire the view of the Brillante, the garden, and the
house.

"Monsieur l'Abbe," he said, "to find such a place as this
would be the height of my ambition."

The old maid wished to read a declaration in the speech.
She lowered her eyes.

"You must be very fond of it, mademoiselle," continued
the Vicomte.

"How could I help being fond of it? It has been in oui
family since 1574, when one of our ancestors, an Intendant
of the Duchy of Alengon, bought the ground and built the
house. It is laid on piles."

Jacquelin having announced that dinner was ready, M. dd
Troisville offered his arm. The radiant spinster tried not tc
lean too heavily upon him; she was still afraid that he might:
think her forward.

"Everything is quite in harmony here," remarked the
Vicomte as they sat down to table.

"Yes, the trees in our garden are full of birds that give u*j
music for nothing. Nobody molests them; the nightingale::
sing there every night," said Mile. Cormon.

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 105

"I am speaking of the inside of the house," remarked the
Yicomte; he had not troubled himself to study his hostess
particularly, and was quite unaware of her vacuity. — "Yes,
everything contributes to the general effect; the tones of
color, the furniture, the character of the house," added he,
addressing Mile. Cormon.

"It costs a great deal, though/' replied that excellent
spinster, "the rates are something enormous." The word
"contribute" had impressed itself on her mind.

"Ah! then are the rates high here?" asked the Vicomte,
too full of his own ideas to notice the absurd non
sequitur.

"I do not know," said the Abbe. "My niece manages her
own property and mine."

"The rates are a mere trifle if people are well-to-do," struck
in Mile. Cormon, anxious not to appear stingy. "As to the
furniture, I leave things as they are. I shall never make
any changes here; at least I shall not, unless I marry, and
in that case everything in the house must be arranged to suit
the master's taste."

"You are for great principles, mademoiselle," smiled the
Yicomte ; "somebody will be a lucky man."

"Nobody ever made me such a pretty speech before,"
thought Mile. Cormon.

The Vicomte complimented his hostess upon the appoint-
ments of the table and the housekeeping, admitting that he
thought that the provinces were behind the times, and found
himself in most delectable quarters.

"Delectable, good Lord! what does it mean?" thought she.
<rWhere is the Chevalier de Yalois to reply to him ? De-lect-
able? Is it made up of several words? There! courage;
perhaps it is Russian, and if so I am not obliged to say any-
thing."— Then she added aloud, her tongue unloosed by an
eloquence which almost every human creature can find in a
great crisis — "We have the most brilliant society here, Mon-
sieur le Yicomte. You will be able to judge for yourself,
for it assembles in this very house ; on some of our acquaint-

106 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

ances we can always count; they will have heard of my rej
turn no doubt, and will be sure to come to see me. There id
the Chevalier de Valois, a gentleman of the old court, a maij
of infinite wit and taste; then there is M. le Marquis
d'Esgrignon and Mile. Armande, his sister" — she bit her lljj
and changed her mind — "a — a remarkable woman in her wayj
She refused all offers of marriage so as to leave her fortune t(
her brother and his son."

"Ah! yes; the d'Esgrignons, I remember them," said th<;
Vicomte.

"Alencon is very gay," pursued mademoiselle, now that sh<
had fairly started off. "There is so much going on; the Re
ceiver-General gives dances; the Prefect is a very pleasan
man; his lordship the Bishop occasionally honors us with i
visit "

"Come!" said the Vicomte, smiling as he spoke, "I hav;
done well, it seems, to come creeping back like a hare (til
lievre) to die in my form."

"It is the same with me," replied mademoiselle; "I an{
like a creeper (le lierre), I must cling to something or die. '

The Vicomte took the saying thus .twisted for a joke, ami
smiled.

"Ah !" thought his hostess, "that is all right, he understand
me."

The conversation was kept up upon generalities. Unde
pressure of a strong desire to please, the strange, mysterious
indefinable workings of consciousness brought all tht
Chevalier de Valois' tricks of speech uppermost in Mile. Coii
mon's brain. It fell out, as it sometimes does in a duel, whei
the Devil himself seems to take aim ; and never did duelist hi|
his man more fairly and squarely than the old maid. ThJ
Vicomte de Troisville was too well mannered to praise thj
excellent dinner, but his silence was panegyric in itself ! A
he drank the delicious wines with which Jacquelin plied hin;
he seemed to be meeting old friends with the livelier
pleasure; for your true amateur does not applaud, h<
joys. He informed himself curiously of the prices of lan<

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 107

houses, and sites ; he drew from mademoiselle a long descrip-
tion of the property between the Brillante and the Sarthe.
He was amazed that the town and the river lay so far apart,
and showed the greatest interest in local topography. The
Abbe sat silent, leaving all the conversation to his niece.
And, in truth, mademoiselle considered that she interested M.
de Troisville ; he smiled graciously at her, he made far more
progress with her in the course of a single dinner than the
most ardent of her former wooers in a whole fortnight. For
which reasons, you may be certain that never was guest so
cosseted, so lapped about with small attentions and observ-
ances. He might have been a much loved lover, new come
home to the house of which he was the delight.

Mademoiselle forestalled his wants. She saw when he
needed bread, her eyes brooded over him; if he turned his
head, she adroitly supplemented his portion of any dish which
he seemed to like; if he had been a glutton, she would have
killed him. What a delicious earnest of all that she counted
upon doing for her lover! She made no silly blunders of
self-depreciation this time ! She went gallantly forward, full
sail, and all flags flying; posed as the queen of Alengon, and
vaunted her preserves. Indeed, she fished for compliments,
talking about herself as if her trumpeter were dead. And
she saw that she pleased the Vicomte, for her wish to please
had so transformed her, that she grew almost feminine. It
was not without inward exultation that she heard footsteps
while they sat at dessert ; sounds of going and coming in the
ante-chamber and noises in the salon ; and knew that the usual
company was arriving. She called the attention of her uncle
and M. de Troisville to this fact as a proof of the affection in
which she was held, whereas it really was a symptom of the
paroxysm of curiosity which convulsed the whole town. Im-
patient to show herself in her glory, she ordered coffee and
the liqueurs to be taken to the salon, whither Jacquelin went
to display to the elite of Alengon the splendors of a Dresden
china service, which only left the cupboard twice in a twelve-
month. All these circumstances were noted by people dis-
posed to criticise under their breath.

108 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"Egad!" cried du Bousquier, "nothing but Mme.
Amphoux's liqueurs, which only come out on the four great
festival days!"

"Decidedly, this match must have been arranged by cor-
respondence for a year past," said M. le President du Eon-
ceret. "The postmaster here has been receiving letters with
an Odessa postmark for the last twelve months."

Mme. Granson shuddered. M. le Chevalier de Valois had
eaten a heavy dinner, but he felt the pallor spreading over his
left cheek; felt, too, that he was betraying his secret, and
said, "It is cold to-day, do you not think ? I am freezing."

"It is the neighborhood of Eussia," suggested du Bousquier.
And the Chevalier looked at his rival as who should say,
"Well put in!"

Mile. Cormon was so radiant, so triumphant, that she looked
positively handsome, it was thought. Nor was this unwonted
brilliancy wholly due to sentiment; ever since the morning
the blood had been surging through her veins; the presenti-
ments of a great crisis at hand affected her nerves. It needed
a combination of circumstances to make her so little like her-
self. With what joy did she not solemnly introduce the
Vicomte to the Chevalier, and the Chevalier to the Vicomte ;
all Alengon was presented to M. de Troisville, and M. de
Troisville made the acquaintance of all Alengon. It fell
out, naturally enough, that the Vicomte and the Chevalier,
two born aristocrats, were in sympathy at once; they
recognized each other for inhabitants of the same social
sphere. They began to chat as they stood by the fire. A
circle formed about them listening devoutly to their conversa-
tion, though it was carried on sotto voce. Fully to realize the
scene, imagine Mile. Cormon standing with her back to the
chimney-piece, busy preparing coffee for her supposed suitor.

M. de Valois. "So M. le Vicomte is coming to settle
here, people say."

M. de Troisville. "Yes, monsieur. I have come to look
for a house." (Mile. Cormon turns, cup in hand.) "And
I must have a large one"— {Mile. Cormon offers the cup of

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 109

coffee) "to hold my family." (The room grows dark before
the old maid's eyes.)

M. de Valois. "Are you married?"

M. de Troisville. "Yes, I have been married for sixteen
years. My wife is the daughter of the Princess Scher-
belloff."

Mile. Cormon dropped like one thunderstruck. Du Bous-
quier, seeing her reel, sprang forward, and caught her in his
arms. Somebody opened the door to let him pass out with his
enormous burden. The mettled Republican, counseled by
Josette, summoned up his strength, bore the old maid to her
room, and deposited her upon the bed. Josette, armed with
a pair of scissors, cut the stay-laces, drawn outrageously tight.
Du Bousquier, rough and ready, dashed cold water over Mile.
Cormon's face and the bust, which broke from its bounds like
Loire in flood. The patient opened her eyes, saw du Bous-
quier, and gave a cry of alarmed modesty. Du Bousquier
withdrew, leaving half-a-dozen women in possession, with
Mme. Granson at their head, Mme. Granson beaming with

joy-

What had the Chevalier de Valois done? True to his
system, he had been covering the retreat.

"Poor Mile. Cormon !" he said, addressing M. de Troisville,
but looking round the room, quelling the beginnings of an
outbreak of laughter with his haughty eyes. "She is dread-
fully troubled with heated blood. She would not be bled be-
fore going to the Prebaudet (her country house), and this is
the result of the spring weather."

"She drove over in the rain this morning," said the Abbe
de Sponde. "She may have taken a little cold, and so caused the
slight derangement of the system to which she is subject.
But she will soon get over it."

"She was telling me the day before yesterday that she had
not had a recurrence of it for three months ; she added at the
time that it was sure to play her a bad turn," added the
Chevalier.

"Ah ! so you are married !" thought Jacquelin, watching M.
de Troisville, who was sipping his coffee,

110 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

The faithful man-servant made his mistress' disappoint-
ment his own. He guessed her feelings. He took away the
liqueurs brought out for a bachelor, and not for a Russian
woman's husband. All these little things were noticed with
amusement.

The Abbe de Sponde had known all along why M. de Trois-
ville had come to Alengon, but in his absent-mindedness he
had said nothing about it; it had never entered his mind that
his niece could take the slightest interest in that gentleman.
As for the Vicomte, he was engrossed by the object of his
journey; like many other married men, he was in no great
hurry to introduce his wife into the conversation ; he had had
no opportunity of saying that he was married; and besides,
he thought that Mile. Cormon knew his history. Du Bous-
quier reappeared, and was questioned without mercy. One
of the six women came down, and reported that Mile. Cormon
was feeling much better, and that her doctor had come; but
she was to stay in bed, and it appeared that she ought to be
bled at once. The salon soon filled. In Mile. Cormon's absence,
the ladies were free to discuss the tragi-comic scene which had
just taken place; and duly they enlarged, annotated, em-
bellished, colored, adorned, embroidered, and bedizened the
tale which was to set all Alengon thinking of the old maid
on the morrow.

Meanwhile, Josette upstairs was saying to her mistress,
"That good M. du Bousquier! How he carried you up-
stairs ! What a fist ! Really, your illness made him quite
pale. He loves you still."

And with this final phrase, the solemn and terrible day
came to a close.

Next day, all morning long, the news of the comedy, with
full details, circulated over Alengon, raising laughter every-
where, to the shame of the town be it said. Next day, Mile
Cormon, very much the better for the blood-letting, would
have seemed sublime to the most hardened of those who jeered
at her, if they could but have seen her noble dignity and the

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 111

Christian resignation in her soul, as she gave her hand to the
unconscious perpetrator of the hoax, and went in to breakfast.
Ah! heartless wags, who were laughing at her expense, why-
could you not hear her say to the Vicomte:

"Mme. de Troisville will have some difficulty in finding a
house to suit her. Do me the favor of using my house, mon-
sieur, until you have made all your arrangements."

"But I have two girls and two boys, mademoiselle. We
should put you to a great deal of inconvenience."

"Do not refuse me," said she, her eyes full of apprehension
and regret.

"I made the offer, however you might decide, in my letter ;
but you did not take it," remarked the Abbe.

"What, uncle ! did you know ? "

Poor thing, she broke off. Josette heaved a sigh, and
neither M. de Troisville nor the uncle noticed anything.

After breakfast, the Abbe de Sponde, carrying out the plan
agreed upon over night, took the Vicomte to see houses for
sale and suitable sites for building. Mile. Cormon was left
alone in the salon.

"I am the talk of the town, child, by this time," she said,
looking piteously at Josette.

"Well, mademoiselle, get married."

"But, my girl, I am not at all prepared to make a choice."

"Bah ! I should take M. du Bousquier if I were you."

"M. de Yalois says that he is such a Kepublican,
Josette."

"Your gentlemen don't know what they are talking about ;
they say that he robbed the Eepublic, so he can't have been at
all fond of it," said Josette, and with that she went.

"That girl is amazingly shrewd," thought Mile. Cjrmon,
left alone to her gnawing perplexity.

She saw that the only way of silencing talk was to marry
at once. This last so patently humiliating check was enough
to drive her to extreme measures ; and it takes a great deal to
force a feeble-minded human being out of a groove, be it
good or bad. Both the old bachelors understood the position

VOL. 7— 30

112 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

of affairs, both made up their minds to call in the morning
to make inquiries, and (in their own language) to press the
point.

M. de Valois considered that the occasion demanded a
scrupulous toilet ; he took a bath, he groomed himself with un-
usual care, and for the first time and the last Cesarine
saw him applying "a suspicion of rouge" with incredible
skill.

Du Bousquier, rough and ready Eepublican that he was,
inspired by dogged purpose, paid no attention to his appear-
ance, he hurried round, and came in first. The fate of men,
like the destinies of empires, hangs on small things. History
records all such principal causes of great failure or success —
a Kellermann's charge at Marengo, a Bliicher coming up at
the battle of Waterloo, a Prince Eugene slighted by Louis
XIV., a cure on the battlefield of Denain ; but nobody profits
by the lesson to be diligently attentive to the little trifles of
his own life. Behold the results. — The Duchesse de Langeais
in L'Histoire des Treize entering a convent for want of ten
minutes' patience; Judge Popinot in L' Interdiction putting
off his inquiries as to the Marquis d'Espard till to-morrow;
Charles Grandet coming home by way of Bordeaux instead of
Nantes — and these things are said to happen by accident and
mere chance! The few moments spent in putting on that
suspicion of rouge wrecked M. de Valois' hopes. Only in
such a way could the Chevalier have succumbed. He had
lived for the Graces, he was foredoomed to die through them.
Even as he gave a last look in the mirror, the burly du Bous-
quier was entering the disconsolate old maid's drawing-room.
His entrance coincided with a gleam of favor in the lady's
mind, though in the course of her deliberations the Chevalier
had decidedly had the advantage.

"It is God's will," she said to herself when du Bousquier ap-
peared.

"Mademoiselle, I trust you will not take my importunity
in bad part; I did not like to trust that great stupid of a
Rene to make inquiries, and came myself,"

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 113

"I am perfectly well," she said nervously; then, after a
pause, and in a very emphatic tone, "Thank you, M. du
Bousquier, for the trouble that you took and that I gave you
yesterday "

She recollected how she had lain in du Bousquier's arms,
and the accident seemed to her to be a direct order from
heaven. For the first time in her life a man had seen her
with her belt wrenched apart, her stay-laces cut, the jewel
shaken violently out of its case.

"I was so heartily glad to carry you, tha.t I thought you a
light weight," said he.

At this Mile. Cormon looked at du Bousquier as she never
looked at any man in the world before ; and thus encouraged,
the ex-contractor for forage flung a side glance that went
straight to the old maid's heart.

"It is a pity," added he, "that this has not given me the
right to keep you always." (She was listening with rapture
in her face.) "You looked dazzling as you lay swooning
there on the bed; I never saw such a fine woman in my life,
and I have seen a good many. — There is this about a stout
woman, she is superb to look at, she has only to show herself,
she triumphs."

"You mean to laugh at me," said the old maid; "that is
not kind of you, when the whole town is perhaps putting a
bad construction on things that happened yesterday."

"It is as true as that my name is du Bousquier, made-
moiselle. My feelings towards you have never changed ; your
first rejection did not discourage me."

The old maid lowered her eyes. There was a pause, a
painful ordeal for du Bousquier. Then Mile. Cormon made
up her mind and raised her eyelids; she looked up tenderly
at du Bousquier through her tears.

"If this is so, monsieur," she said, in a tremulous voice, "I
only ask you to allow me to lead a Christian life, do not ask
me to change any of my habits as to religion, leave me free
to choose my directors, and I will give you my hand," holding
it out to him as she spoke.

114 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Du Bousquier caught the plump, honest hand that held so
many francs, and kissed it respectfully.

"But I have one thing more to ask," added Mile. Cormon,
suffering him to kiss her hand.

"It is granted, and if it is impossible, it shall be done" (a
reminiscence of Beaujon).

"Alas !" began the old maid, "for love of me you must bur-
den your soul with a sin which I know is heinous ; falsehood
is one of the seven deadly sins ; but still you can make a con-
fession, can you not ? We will both of us do penance." They
looked tenderly at each other at those words.

"Perhaps," continued Mile. Cormon, "after all, it is one of
those deceptions which the Church calls venial "

"Is she going to tell me that she is in Suzanne's plight ?"

thought du Bousquier. "What luck! " Aloud he said,

"Well, mademoiselle?"

"And you must take it upon you "

"What?"

"To say that this marriage was agreed upon between us
six months ago.9'

"Charming woman !" exclaimed the forage-contractor, and
by his manner he implied that he was prepared to make even
this sacrifice; "a man only does thus much for the woman he
has worshiped for ten years."

"In spite of my severity ?" asked she.

"Yes, in spite of your severity."

"M. du Bousquier, I have misjudged you." Again she held
out her big, red hand, and again du Bousquier kissed it.

At that very moment the door opened, and the betrothed
couple, turning their heads, perceived the charming but too
tardy Chevalier.

"Ah ! fair queen," said he, "so you have risen ?"

Mile. Cormon smiled at him, and something clutched at
her heart. M. de Valois, grown remarkably young and ir-
resistible, looked like Lauzun entering La Grande Made-
moiselle's apartments.

"Ah! my dear du Bousquier!" he continued, half laugh-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 115

ingly, so sure was he of success. "M. de Troisville and the
Abbe de Sponde are in front of your house, looking it over
like a pair of surveyors."

"On my word," said du Bousquier, "if the Vicomte de
Troisville wants it, he can have it for forty thousand francs.
It is of no use whatever to me. — Always, if mademoiselle
has no objection, that must be ascertained first. — Made-
moiselle, may I tell? — Yes? — Very well, my dear Chevalier,
you shall be the first to hear" — Mile. Cormon dropped her
eyes — "of the honor and the favor that mademoiselle is doing
me; I have kept it a secret for more than six months. We
are going to be married in a very few days, the contract is
drawn up, we shall sign it to-morrow. So, you see, that I
have no further use for my house in the Rue du Cygne. I
am quietly on the lookout for a purchaser, and the Abbe de
Sponde, who knew this, naturally took M. de Troisville to
see it."

There was such a color of truth about this monstrous fib
that the Chevalier was quite taken in by it. My dear
Chevalier was a return for all preceding defeats; it was like
the victory won at Pultowa by Peter the Great over Charles
XII. And thus du Bousquier enjoyed a delicious revenge for
hundreds of pin-pricks endured in silence ; but in his triumph
he forgot that he was not a young man, he passed his fingers
through the false toupet, and — it came off in his hand !

"I congratulate you both," said the Chevalier, with an
agreeable smile; "I wish that you may end like the fairy
stories, 'They lived very happily and had a fine — family of
children !' " Here he shaped a cone of snuff in his palm be-
fore adding mockingly, "But, monsieur, you forgot that —
er — you wear borrowed plumes."

Du Bousquier reddened. The false toupet was ten inches
awry. Mile. Cormon raised her eyes to the face of her
betrothed, saw the bare cranium, and bashfully looked down
again. Never toad looked more venomously at a victim than
da Bousquier at the Chevalier.

"A pack of aristocrats that look down on me !" he thought.
"I will crush you all some of these days."

116 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

The Chevalier de Valois imagined that he had regained all
the lost ground. But Mile. Cormon was not the woman to
understand the connection between the Chevalier's congratu-
lation and the allusion to the false toupet; and, for that
matter, even if she had understood, her hand had been given.
M. de Valois saw too clearly that all was lost. Meantime, as
the two men stood without speaking, Mile. Cormon innocently
studied how to amuse them.

"Play a game of reversis," suggested she, without any mali-
cious intention.

Du Bousquier smiled, and went as future master of the
house for the card-table. Whether the Chevalier de Valois
had lost his head, or whether he chose to remain to study the
causes of his defeat and to remedy it, certain it is that he al-
lowed himself to be led like a sheep to the slaughter. But
he had just received the heaviest of all bludgeon blows; and
a noble might have been excused if he had been at any rate
stunned by it. Very soon the worthy Abbe de Sponde and
M. de Troisville returned, and at once Mile. Cormon hurried
into the ante-chamber, took her uncle aside, and told him in
a whisper of her decision. Then, hearing that the house in
the Eue du Cygne suited M. de Troisville, she begged her
betrothed to do her the service of saying that her uncle knew
that the place was for sale. She dared not confide the fib to
the Abbe, for fear that he should forget. The falsehood was
destined to prosper better than if it had been a virtuous
action. All Alengon heard the great news that night. For
four days the town had found as much to say as in the
ominous days of 1814 and 1815. Some laughed at the idea,
others thought it true; some condemned, others approved the
marriage. The bourgeoisie of Alencon regarded it as a con-
quest, and they were the best pleased.

The Chevalier de Valois, next day, among his own circle,
brought out this cruel epigram, "The Cormons are ending as
they began ; stewards and contractors are all on a footing."

The news of Mile. Cormon's choice went to poor Athanase's
heart ; but he showed not a sign of the dreadful tumult surg-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 117

ing within. He heard of the marriage at President du Ron-
ceret's while his mother was playing a game of boston. Mme.
Granson, looking up, saw her son's face in the glass; he
looked white, she thought, but then he had been pale ever since
vague rumors had reached him in the morning. Mile. Cor-
mon was the card on which Athanase staked his life, and chill
presentiments of impending catastrophe already wrapped him
about. When intellect and imagination have exaggerated a
calamity till it becomes a burden too heavy for shoulders and
brow to bear, when some long-cherished hope fails utterly,
and with it the visions which enable a man to forget the
fierce vulture cares gnawing at his heart; then, if that man
has no belief in himself, in spite of his powers; no belief in
the future, in spite of the Power Divine — he is broken in
pieces. Athanase was a product of education under the
Empire. Fatalism, the Emperor's creed, spread downwards
to the lowest ranks of the army, to the very schoolboys at their
desks. Athanase followed Mme. du Ronceret's play with a
stolidity which might so easily have been taken for indiffer-
ence, that Mme. Granson fancied she had been mistaken as
to her son's feelings.

Athanase's apparent carelessness explained his refusal to
sacrifice his so-called "Liberal" opinions. This word, then
recently coined for the Emperor Alexander, proceeded into the
language, I believe, by way of Mme. de Stael through Benja-
min Constant.

After that fatal evening the unhappy young man took to
haunting one of the most picturesque walks along the Sarthe ;
every artist who comes to Alencon sketches it from that point
of view, for the sake of the watermills, and the river gleaming
brightly out among the fields, between the shapely well-grown
trees on either side. Flat though the land may be, it lacks
none of the subdued peculiar charm of French landscape;
for in France your eyes are never wearied by glaring Eastern
sunlight, nor saddened by too continual mist. It is a lonely
spot. Dwellers m the provinces care nothing for beautiful
scenery, perhaps because it is always about them, perhaps

118 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

because there is a sense lacking in them. If there is such a
thing as a promenade, a mall, or any spot from which you see
a beautiful view, it is sure to be the one unfrequented part of
the town. Athanase liked the loneliness, with the water like a
living presence in it, and the fields just turning green in the
warmth of the early spring sunlight. Occasionally some one
who had seen him sitting at a poplar foot, and received an
intent gaze from his eyes, would speak to Mme. Granson
about him.

"There is something the matter with your son."

"I know what he is about/' the mother would say with a
satisfied air, hinting that he was meditating some great work.

Athanase meddled no more in politics; he had no opin-
ions ; and yet, now and again, he was merry enough, merry at
the expense of others, after the wont of those who stand alone
and apart in contempt of public opinion. The young fellow
lived so entirely outside the horizon of provincial ideas and
amusements, that he was interesting to few people ; he did not
so much as rouse curiosity. Those who spoke of him to his
mother did so for her sake, not for his. Not a creature in
Alencon sympathized with Athanase ; the Sarthe received the
tears which no friend, no loving woman dried. If the
magnificent Suzanne had chanced to pass that way, how much
misery might have been prevented — the two young creatures
would have fallen in love.

And yet Suzanne certainly passed that way. Her ambition
had been first awakened by a sufficiently marvelous tale of
things which happened in 1799; an old story of adventures
begun at the sign of the Three Moors had turned her childish
brain. They used to tell how an adventuress, beautiful as an
angel, had come from Paris with a commission from Fouche
to ensnare the Marquis de Montauran, the Chouan leader sent
over by the Bourbons ; how she met him at that very inn of
the Three Moors as he came back from his Mortagne expedi-
tion; and how she won his love, and gave him up to his
enemies. The romantic figure of this woman, the power of
beauty, the whole story of Marie de Verneuil and the Marquis

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 119

de Montauran, dazzled Suzanne, till, as she grew older, she
too longed to play with men's lives. A few months after the
flight, she could not resist the desire to see her native place
again, on her way to Brittany with an artist. She wanted to
see Fougeres, where the Marquis de Montauran met his
death; and thought of making a pilgrimage to the scenes of
stories told to her in childhood of that War in the West, so
little known even yet. She wished, besides, to revisit Alengon
with such splendor in her surroundings, and so completely
metamorphosed, that nobody should know her again. She in-
tended to put her mother beyond the reach of want in one
moment, and, in some tactful way, to send a sum of money
to poor Athanase — a sum which for genius in modern days is
the equivalent of a Kebecca's gift of horse and armor to an
Ivanhoe of the Middle Ages.

A month went by. Opinions as to Mile. Cormon's marriage
fluctuated in the strangest way. There was an incredulous
section which strenuously denied the truth of the report, and
a party of believers who persistently affirmed it. At the end
of a fortnight, the doubters received a severe check. Du
Bousquier's house was sold to M. de Troisville for forty-three
thousand francs. M. de Troisville meant to live quite quietly
in Alengon; he intended to return to Paris after the death
of the Princess Scherbelloff, but until the inheritance fell in
he would spend his time in looking after his estates. This
much appeared to be fact. But the doubting faction declined
to be crushed. Their assertion was that, married or no, du
Bousquier had done a capital stroke of business, for his house
only stood him in a matter of twenty-seven thousand francs.
The believers were taken aback by this peremptory decision
on the part of their opponents. "Choisnel, Mile. Cormon's
notary, had not heard a word of marriage settlements," added
the incredulous.

But on the twentieth day the unshaken believers enjoyed
a signal victory over the doubters. M. Lepresseur, the
Liberal notary, went to Mile. Cormon's house, and the con-
tract was signed. This was the first of many sacrifices

120 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

which Kose made to her husband. The fact was that du
Bousquier detested Choisnel; he blamed the notary for Mile.
Armande's refusal in the first place, as well as for his previous
rejection by Mile. Cormon, who, as he believed, had followed
Mile. Armande's example. He managed Mile. Cormon so
well, that she, noble-hearted woman, believing that she had
misjudged her future husband, wished to make reparation
for her doubts, and sacrificed her notary to her love. Still
she submitted the contract to Choisnel, and he — a man
worthy of Plutarch — defended Mile. Cormon's interests by
letter. This was the one cause of delay.

Mile. Cormon received a good many anonymous letters.
She was informed, to her no small astonishment, that Suzanne
was as honest a woman as she was herself; and that the
seducer in the false toupet could not possibly have played the
part assigned to him in such an adventure. Mile. Cormon
scorned anonymous letters; she wrote, however, to Suzanne
with a view to gaining light on the creeds of the Maternity
Society. Suzanne probably had heard of du Bousquier's
approaching marriage; she confessed to her stratagem, sent
a thousand francs to the Fund, and damaged the forage-con-
tractor's character very considerably. Mile. Cormon called j
an extraordinary meeting of the Maternity Charity, and the j
assembled matrons passed a resolution that henceforward the j
Fund should give help after and not before misfortunes!
befell.

In spite of these proceedings, which supplied the town withi
tidbits of gossip to discuss, the banns were published at the!
church and the mayor's office. It was Athanase's duty to make;
out the needful documents. The betrothed bride had gonei
to the Pr6baudet, a measure taken partly by way of conven-i
tional modesty, partly for general security. Thither du Bous-
quier went every morning, fortified by atrocious and sumptu-
ous bouquets, returning in the evening to dinner.

At last, one gray rainy day in June, the wedding took place;
and Mile. Cormon and the Sieur du Bousquier, as the in-j
credulous faction called him, were married at the parish

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 121

church in the sight of all Alencon. Bride and bridegroom
drove to the mayor's office, and afterwards to the church, in a
caleche — a splendid equipage for Alencon. Du Bousquier had
it sent privately from Paris. The loss of the old cariole was
a kind of calamity for the whole town. The saddler of the
Porte de Seez lost an income of fifty francs per annum for
repairs; he lifted up his voice and wept. With dismay the
town of Alengon beheld the luxury introduced by the Maison
Cormon; every one feared a rise of prices all round, an in-
crease of house rent, an invasion of Paris furniture. There
were some whose curiosity pricked them to the point of giving
Jacquelin ten sous for a nearer sight of so startling an innova-
tion in a thrifty province. A pair of Normandy horses like-
wise caused much concern.

"If we buy horses for ourselves in this way, we shall not
sell them long to those that come to buy of us," said du
Ronceret's set.

The reasoning seemed profound, stupid though it was, in so
far as it prevented the district from securing a monopoly of
money from outside. In the political economy of the prov-
inces the wealth of nations consists not so much in a brisk
circulation of money as in hoards of unproductive coin.

At length the old maid's fatal wish was fulfilled. Penelope
sank under the attack of pleurisy contracted forty days before
the wedding. Nothing could save her. Mme. Granson, Mari-
ette, Mme. du Coudrai, Mme. du Ronceret — the whole town,
in fact — noticed that the bride came into church with the
left foot foremost, an omen all the more alarming because the
word Left even then had acquired a political significance.
The officiating priest chanced to open the mass-book at the
Be profundis. And so the wedding passed off, amid presages
so ominous, so gloomy, so overwhelming, that nobody was
found to augur well of it. Things went from bad to worse.
There was no attempt at a wedding party; the bride and
bridegroom started out for the Prebaudet. Paris fashions
were to supplant old customs ! In the evening Alengon said
its say as to all these absurdities ; some persons had reckoned

122 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

upon one of the usual provincial jollifications, which they con-
sidered they had a right to expect, and these spoke their minds
pretty freely. But Mariette and Jacquelin had a merry wed-
ding, and they alone in all Alengon gainsaid the dismal proph-
ecies.

Bu Bousquier wished to spend the profit made by the sale
of his house on restoring and modernizing the Hotel Cormon.
He had quite made up his mind to stay for some months at
the Prebaudet, whither he brought his uncle de Sponde. The
news spread dismay through Alengon; every one felt that du
Bousquier was about to draw the country into the downward
path of domestic comfort. The foreboding grew to a fear one
morning when du Bousquier drove over from the Prebaudet
to superintend his workmen at the Val-Noble ; and the towns-
people beheld a tilbury, harnessed to a new horse, and Bene
in livery by his master's side. Du Bousquier had invested his
wife's savings in the funds which stood at sixty-seven francs
fifty centimes. This was the first act of the new administra-
tion. In the space of one year, by constantly speculating for
a rise, he made for himself a fortune almost as considerable
as his wife's. But something else happened in connection
with this marriage to make it seem yet more inauspicious, and
put all previous overwhelming portents and alarming innova-
tions into the background.

It was the evening of the wedding day. Athanase and his
mother were sitting in the salon by the little fire of brush-
wood (or regalades, as they say in the patois), which the
servant had lighted after dinner.

"Well," said Mme. Granson, "we will go to President du
Ronceret's to-night, now that we have no Mile. Cormon.
Goodness me ! I shall never get used to calling her Mme. du
Bousquier ; that name makes my lips sore."

Athanase looked at his mother with a sad constraint; he
could not smile, and he wanted to acknowledge, as it were,
the artless thoughtfulness which soothed the wound it coul(
not heal.

"Mamma," he began — it was several years since he had

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 123

used that word, and his tones were so gentle that they sounded
like the voice of his childhood — "'mamma, dear, do not let us
go out just yet ; it is so nice here by the fire I"

It was a supreme cry of mortal anguish ; the mother heard
it and did not understand.

"Let us stay, child," she said. "I would certainly rather
talk with you and listen to your plans than play at boston and
perhaps lose my money."

"You are beautiful to-night; I like to look at you. And
besides, the current of my thoughts is in harmony with this
poor little room, where we have been through so much trouble
— you and I."

"And there is still more in store for us, poor Athanase, until
your work succeeds. For my own part, I am used to poverty :
but, oh, my treasure, to look on and see your youth go by
while you have no joy of it ! Nothing but work in your life !
That thought is like a disease for a mother. It tortures me
night and morning. I wake up to it. Ah, God in heaven!
what have I done ? What sin of mine is punished with this ?"

She left her seat, took a little chair, and sat down beside
Athanase, nestling close up to his side, till she could lay her
head on her child's breast. Where a mother is truly a mother,
the grace of love never dies. Athanase kissed her on the eyes,
on the gray hair, on the forehead, with the reverent love that
fain would lay the soul where the lips are laid.

"I shall never succeed," he said, trying to hide the fatal
purpose which he was revolving in his mind.

"Pooh ! you are not going to be discouraged ? Mind can do
all things, as you say. With ten bottles of ink, ten reams of
paper, and a strong will, Luther turned Europe upside down.
Well, and you are going to make a great name for yourself ;
you are going to use to good ends the powers which he used
for evil. Did you not say so? Now I remember what you
say, you see; I understand much more than you think; for
you still lie so close under my heart, that your least little
thought thrills through it, as your slightest movement did

124 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"I shall not succeed here, you see, mamma, and I will not
have you looking on while I am struggling and heartsore and
in anguish. Mother, let me leave Alengon; I want to go
through it all away from you."

"I want to be at your side always," she said proudly. "Suf-
fering alone! you without your mother! your poor mother
that would be your servant if need were, and keep out of sight
for fear of injuring you, if you wished it, and never accuse
you of pride ! No, no, Athanase, we will never be parted !"

Athanase put his arms about her and held her with a pas-
sionate tight clasp, as a dying man might cling to life.

"And yet I wish it," he said. "If we do not part, it is all
over with me. . . . The double pain — yours and mine —
would kill me. It is better that I should live, is it not ?"

Mme. Granson looked with haggard eyes into her son's
face.

"So this is what you have been brooding over ! They said
truth. Then you are going away?"

"Yes."

"But you are not going until you have told me all about it,
and without giving me any warning? You must have some
things to take with you, and money. There are some louis
d'or sewed into my petticoat ; you must have them."

Athanase burst into tears.

"That was all that I wanted to tell you," he said after a
while. "Now, I will see you to the President's house."

Mother and son went out together. Athanase left Mme.
Granson at the door of the house where she was to spend the
evening. He looked long at the shafts of light that escaped
through chinks in the shutters. He stood there glued to the
spot, while a quarter of an hour went by, and it was with
almost delirious joy that he heard his mother say, "Grand
independence of hearts."

"Poor mother, I have deceived her !" he exclaimed to him-
self as he reached the river.

He came down to the tall poplar on the bank where he had
been wont to sit and meditate during the last six weeks. Two

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 125

big stones lay there ; he had brought them himself for a seat.
And now, looking out over the fair landscape lying in the
moonlight, he passed in review all the so glorious future that
should have been his. He went through cities stirred to en-
thusiasm by his name ; he heard the cheers of crowded streets,
breathed the incense of banquets, looked with a great yearning
over that life of his dreams, rose uplifted and radiant in glori-
ous triumph, raised a statue to himself, summoned up all his
illusions to bid them farewell in a last Olympian carouse.
The magic could only last for a little while; it fled, it had
vanished for ever. In that supreme moment he clung to his
beautiful tree as if it had been a friend; then he put the
stones, one in either pocket, and buttoned his overcoat. His
hat he had purposely left at home. He went down the bank
to look for a deep spot which he had had in view for some
time ; and slid in resolutely, trying to make as little noise as
possible. There was scarcely a sound.

When Mme. Granson came home about half-past nine that
night, the maid-of-all-work said nothing of Athanase, but
handed her a letter. Mme. Granson opened it and read :

"I have gone away, my kind mother; do not think hardly
of me." That was all.

"A pretty thing he has done !" cried she. "And how about
his linen and the money ? But he will write, and I shall find
him. The poor children always think themselves wiser than
their fathers and mothers." And she went to bed with a quiet
mind.

The Sarthe had risen with yesterday's rain. Fishers and
anglers were prepared for this, for the swollen river washes
down the eels from the little streams on its course. It so hap-
pened that an eel-catcher had set his lines over the very spot
where poor Athanase had chosen to drown himself, thinking
that he should never be heard of again; and next morning,
about six o'clock, the man drew out the young dead body.

One or two women among Mme. Granson's few friends
went to prepare the poor widow with all possible care to re-
ceive the dreadful yield of the river. The news of the suicide,

126 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

as might be expected, produced a tremendous sensation. Only
last evening the poverty-stricken man of genius had not a
single friend; the morning after his death scores of voices
cried, "I would so willingly have helped him !" So easy is it
to play a charitable part when no outlay is involved. The
Chevalier de Valois, in the spirit of revenge, explained the
suicide. It was a boyish, sincere, and noble passion for Mile.
Cormon that drove Athanase to take his own life. And when
the Chevalier had opened Mme. Granson's eyes, she saw a
multitude of little things to confirm this view. The story
grew touching; women cried over it.

Mme. Granson sorrowed with a dumb concentration of grief
which few understood. For mothers there are two ways of
bereavement. It often happens that every one else can under-
stand the greatness of her loss ; her boy was admired and ap-
preciated, young or handsome, with fair prospects before him
or brilliant successes won already ; every one regrets him, every
one shares her mourning, and the grief that is widely spread
is not so hard to bear. Then there is the loss that one under-
stands. No one else knew her boy and all that he was; his
smiles were for her alone ; she, and she only, knew how much
perished with that life, too early cut short. Such sorrow hides
itself; beside that darkness other woe grows pale; no words
can describe it ; and, happily, there are not many women who
know what it is to have those heart-strings finally severed.

Even before Mme. du Bousquier came back to town, hei
obliging friend, Mme. du Eonceret, went to fling a dead body
down among the roses of her new-wedded happiness, to let
her know what a love she had refused. Ever so gently the
Presidente squeezed a shower of drops of wormwood over the
honey of the first month of married life. And as Mme. du
Bousquier returned, it so happened that she met Mme. Gran-
son at the corner of the Val-Noble, and the look in the heart-
broken mother's eyes cut her to the quick. It was a look from
a woman dying of grief, a thousand curses gathered up into
one glance of malediction, a thousand sparks in one gleam oi
hate. It frightened Mme. du Bousquier; it boded ill, and in-
voked ill upon her.

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 127

Mme. Granson had belonged to the party most opposed to
the cure ; she was a bitter partisan of the priest of St. Leon-
ard's ; but on the very evening of the tragedy she thought of
the rigid orthodoxy of her own party, and she shuddered. She
herself laid her son in his shroud, thinking all the while of the
Mother of the Saviour ; then with a soul quivering with agony,
she betook herself to the house of the perjured priest. She
found him busy, the humble good man, storing the hemp and
flax which he gave to poor women and girls to spin, so that no
worker should ever want work, a piece of wise charity which
had saved more than one family that could not endure to beg.
He left his hemp at once and brought his visitor into the
dining-room, where the stricken mother saw the frugality of
her own housekeeping in the supper that stood waiting for the
cure.

"M. FAbbe," she began, "I have come to entreat you "

She burst into tears, and could not finish the sentence.

"I know why you have come," answered the holy man, "and
I trust to you, madame, and to your relative Mme. du Bous-
quier to make it right with his Lordship at Seez. Yes, I will
pray for your unhappy boy; yes, I will say masses; but we
must avoid all scandal, we must give no occasion to ill-dis-
posed people to gather together in the church. ... I
myself, alone, and at night "

"Yes, yes, as you wish, if only he is laid in consecrated
ground !" she said, poor mother ; and taking the priest's hand
in hers, she kissed it.

And so, just before midnight, a bier was smuggled into the
parish church. Four young men, Athanase's friends, carried
it. There were a few little groups of veiled and black-clad
women, Mme. Granson's friends, and some seven or eight lads
that had been intimate with the dead. The bier was covered
with a pall, torches were lit at the corners, and the cure read
the office for the dead, with the help of one little choir boy
whom he could trust. Then the suicide was buried, noise-
lessly, in a corner of the churchyard, and a dark wooden cross
with no name upon it marked the grave for the mother.
Athanase lived and died in the shadow.

YOL. 7—3I

128 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Not a voice was raised against the cure; his Lordship at
Seez was silent ; the mother's piety redeemed her son's impious
deed.

Months afterwards, moved by the inexplicable thirst of sor-
row which drives the unhappy to steep their lips in their bitter
cup, the poor woman went to see the place where her son
drowned himself. Perhaps she felt instinctively that there
were thoughts to be gathered under the poplar tree ; perhaps,
too, she longed to see all that his eyes had seen for the last
time. The sight of the spot would kill many a mother ; while
again there are some who can kneel and worship there. — There
are truths on which the patient anatomist of human nature
cannot insist too much ; verities against which education and
laws and systems of philosophy are shattered. It is absurd —
let us repeat it again and again — to try to lay down hard-and-
fast rules in matters of feeling; the personal element comes
in to modify feeling as it arises, and a man's character in-
fluences his most instinctive actions.

Mme. Granson, by the river-side, saw a woman at some dis-
tance— a woman who came nearer, till she reached the fatal
spot, and exclaimed :

"Then this is the place !"

One other woman in the world wept there as the mother
was weeping, and that woman was Suzanne. She had heard
of the tragedy on her arrival that morning at the Three Moors.
If poor Athanase had been alive, she might have done what
poor and generous people dream of doing, and the rich never
think of putting in practice ; she would have enclosed a thou-
sand francs with the words, "Money lent by your father to a
comrade who now repays you." During her journey Suzanne
had thought of this angelic way of giving. She looked up
and saw Mme. Granson.

"I loved him," she said ; then she hurried away.

Suzanne, true to her nature, did not leave Alencon till she
had changed the bride's wreath of orange flowers to water-
lilies. She was the first to assert that Mme. du Bousquier
would be Mile. Cormon as long as she lived. And with one

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 129

jibe she avenged both Athanase and the dear Chevalier de
Valois.

Alengon beheld another and more piteous suicide. Athanase
was promptly forgotten by a world that willingly, and indeed
of necessity, forgets its dead as soon as possible ; but the poor
Chevalier's existence became a kind of death-in-life, a suicide
continued morning after morning during fourteen years.
Three months after du Bousquier's marriage, people remarked,
not without astonishment, that the Chevalier's linen was turn-
ing yellow, and his hair irregularly combed. M. de Valois was
no more, for a disheveled M. de Valois could not be said to be
himself. An ivory tooth here and there deserted from the
ranks, and no student of human nature could discover to what
corps they belonged, whether they were native or foreign, ani-
mal or vegetable ; nor whether, finally, they had been extracted
by old age, or were merely lying out of sight and out of mind
in the Chevalier's dressing-table drawer. His cravat was
wisped, careless of elegance, into a cord. The negroes' heads
grew pale for lack of soap and water. The lines on the
Chevalier's face deepened into wrinkles and darkened as his
complexion grew more and more like parchment ; his neglected
nails were sometimes adorned with an edge of black velvet.
Grains of snuff- lay scattered like autumn leaves in the furrows
of his waistcoat. The cotton in his ears was but seldom re-
newed. Melancholy, brooding on his brow, spread her sallow
hues through his wrinkles ; in short, time's ravages, hitherto
so carefully repaired, began to appear in rifts and cracks in
the noble edifice. Here was proof of the power of the mind
over matter ! The blond cavalier, the jeune premier, fell into
decay when hope failed.

Hitherto the Chevalier's nose had made a peculiarly elegant
appearance in public ; never had it been seen to distil a drop
of amber, to let fall a dark wafer of moist rappee ; but now,
with a snuff-bedabbled border about the nostrils, and an un-
sightly stream taking advantage of the channel hollowed above
the upper lip, that nose, which no longer took pains to please,
revealed the immense trouble that the Chevalier must have

TUB JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

formerly taken with himself. In this neglect you saw
the extent, the greatness and persistence of the man's designs
upon Mile. Cormon. The Chevalier was crushed by a pun
from du Coudrai, whose dismissal he however procured. It
was the first instance of vindictiveness on the part of the
urbane gentleman ; but then the pun was atrocious, worse by
a hundred cubits than any other ever made by the registrar
of mortgages. M. du Coudrai, observing this nasal revolution,
had nicknamed the Chevalier "Nerestan" (nez-restant) .

Latterly the Chevalier's witticisms had been few and far
between ; the anecdotes went the way of the teeth, but his appe-
tite continued as good as ever ; out of the great shipwreck of
hopes he saved nothing but his digestion; and while he took
his snuff feebly, he despatched his dinner with an avidity
alarming to behold. You may mark the extent of the havoc
wrought in his ideas in the fact that his colloquies with the
Princess Goritza grew less and less frequent. He came to
Mile. Armande's one day with a false calf in front of his shins.
The bankruptcy of elegance was something painful, I protest ;
all Alengon was shocked by it. It scared society to see an
elderly young man drop suddenly into his dotage, and from
sheer depression of spirits pass from fifty to ninety years.
And besides, he had betrayed his secret. He had been waiting
and lying in wait for Mile. Cormon. For ten long years, per-
severing sportsman that he was, he had been stalking the
game, and he had missed his shot. The impotent Republic
had won a victory over a valiant Aristocracy, and that in full
flood of Restoration ! The sham had triumphed over the real ;
spirit was vanquished by matter, diplomacy by insurrection ;
and as a final misfortune, a grisette in an outbreak of bad
temper, let out the secret of the Chevalier's levees !

At once he became a man of the worst character. The
Liberal party laid all du Bousquier's foundlings on the Cheva-
lier's doorstep, while the Faubourg Saint-Germain of Alencon
boastingly accepted them; laughed and cried, "The dear
Chevalier! What else could he do?" Saint-Germain pitied
the Chevalier, took him to its bosom, and smiled more than

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 131

ever upon him; while an appalling amount of unpopularity
was drawn down upon du Bousquier's head. Eleven persons
seceded from the salon Cormon and went over to the d'Es-
grignons.

But the especial result of the marriage was a more sharply-
marked division of parties in Alengon. The Maison d'Es-
grignon represented undiluted aristocracy ; for the Troisvilles
on their return joined the clique. The Maison Cormon, skil-
fully influenced by du Bousquier, was not exactly Liberal,
nor yet resolutely Royalist, but of that unlucky shade of
opinion which produced the 221 members, so soon as the po-
litical struggle took a definite shape, and the greatest, most
august, and only real power of Kingship came into collision
with that most false, fickle, and tyrannical power which, when
wielded by an elective body, is known as the power of Parlia-
ment.

The third salon, the salon du Ronceret, out and out Radical
in its politics, was secretly allied with the Maison Cormon.

With the return from the Prebaudet, a life of continual
suffering began for the Abbe de Sponde. He kept all that he
endured locked within his soul, uttering not a word of com-
plaint to his niece ; but to Mile. Armande he opened his heart,
admitting that taking one folly with another, he should have
preferred the Chevalier. M. de Valois would not have had
the bad taste to thwart a feeble old man with but a few days
to live. Du Bousquier had pulled the old home to pieces.

"Mademoiselle," the old Abbe said as the thin tears fell
from his faded old eyes, "the lime-tree walk, where I have
been used to meditate these fifty years, is gone. My dear lime-
trees have all been cut down ! Just as I am nearing the end
of my days the Republic has come back again in the shape of
a horrible revolution in the house."

"Your niece must be forgiven," said the Chevalier de
Valois. "Republicanism is a youthful error; youth goes out
to seek for liberty, and finds tyranny in its worst form — the
tyranny of the impotent rabble. Your niece, poor thing, has
not been punished by the thing wherein she sinned/'

132 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"What is to become of me in a house with naked women
dancing all over the walls ? Where shall I find the lime-tree
walks where I used to read my breviary ?"

Like Kant, who lost the thread of his ideas when somebody
cut down the fir-tree on which he fixed his eyes as he medi-
tated, the good Abbe pacing up and down the shadowless al-
leys could not say his prayers with the same uplifting of soul.
Du Bousquier had laid out an English garden !

"It looked nicer," Mme. du Bousquier said. Not that she
really thought so, but the Abbe Couturier had authorized her
to say and do a good many things that she might please her
husband.

With the restoration, all the glory departed from the old
house, and all its quaint, cheerful, old-world look. If the
Chevalier de Valois' neglect of his person might be taken as
a sort of abdication, the bourgeois majesty of the salon Cor-
mon passed away when the drawing-room was decorated with
white and gold; and blue silk curtains and mahogany otto-
mans made their appearance. In the dining-room, fitted up
in the modern style, the dishes were somehow not so hot, nor
the dinners quite what they had been. M. du Coudrai said
that the puns stuck fast in his throat when he saw the painted
figures on the walls and felt their eyes upon him. Without,
the house was provincial as ever ; within, the forage-contractor
of the Directory made himself everywhere felt. All over the
house you saw the stockbroker's bad taste; stucco pilasters,
glass doors, classic cornices, arid decoration — a medley of
every imaginable style and ill-assorted magnificence.

Alengon criticised such unheard-of luxury for a fortnight,
and grew proud of it at the end of a few months. Several
rich manufacturers refurnished their houses in consequence,
and set up fine drawing-rooms. Modern furniture made its
appearance ; astral lamps might even be seen in some places.

The Abbe de Sponde was the first to see the unhappiness
which lay beneath the surface of his dear child's married life.
The old dignified simplicity which ruled their way of living
was gone; du Bousquier gave two balls every month in the

ttHE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 133

course of the first winter. The venerable house — oh, to think
of it ! — echoed with the sound of violins and worldly gaiety.
The Abbe, on his knees, prayed while the merriment lasted.

The politics of the sober salon underwent a gradual change
for the worse. The Abbe de Sponde divined du Bousquier;
he shuddered at his nephew's dictatorial tone. He saw tears
in his niece's eyes when the disposal of her fortune was taken
out of her hands; her husband left her only the control of
the linen, the table, and such things as fall to a woman's lot.
Rose had no more orders to give. Jacquelin, now coachman
exclusively, took his orders from no one but his master ; Rene,
the groom, did likewise, so did the man-cook imported from
Paris; Mariette was only the kitchen-maid; and Mme. du
Bousquier had no one to tyrannize over but Josette.

Does any one know how much it costs to give up the de-
licious exercise of authority ? If the triumph of will is one of
the most intoxicating of the great man's joys, to have one's
own way is the whole life of narrow natures. No one but a
cabinet minister fallen into disgrace can sympathize with
Mme. du Bousquier's bitter pain when she saw herself reduced
to a cipher in her own house. She often drove out when she
would rather have stayed at home; she saw company which
she did not like ; she who had been free to spend as she pleased,
and had never spent at all, had lost the control of the money
which she loved. Impose limits, and who does not wish to go
beyond them ? Is there any sharper suffering than that which
comes of thwarted will ?

But these beginnings were the roses of life. Every con-
cession was counseled by poor Rose's love for her husband,
and at first du Bousquier behaved admirably to his wife. He
was very good to her; he brought forward sufficient reasons
for every encroachment. The room, so long left empty, echoed
with the voices of husband and wife in fireside talk. And so,
for the first few years of married life, Mme. du Bousquier
wore a face of content, and that little air of emancipation
and mystery often seen in a young wife after a marriage of
love. She had no more trouble with "heated blood." This

134 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

countenance of hers routed scoffers, gave the lie to gossip con-
cerning du Bousquier, and put observers of human nature at
fault.

Eose Marie Victoire was so afraid lest she should lose her
husband's affection or drive him from her side by setting her
will against his, that she would have made any sacrifice, even
of her uncle if need be. And the Abbe de Sponde, deceived
by Mme. du Bousquier's poor foolish little joys, bore his own
discomforts the more easily for the thought that his niece was
happy.

At first Alencon shared this impression. But there was
one man less easy to deceive than all the rest of Alencon put
together. The Chevalier de Valois had taken refuge on the
Mons Sacer of the most aristocratic section, and spent his time
with the d'Esgrignons. He lent an ear to the scandal and
tittle-tattle ; night and day he studied how to have his revenge
before he died. The perpetrator of puns had been already
brought low, and he meant to stab du Bousquier to the heart.

The poor Abbe, knowing as he did the cowardliness of his
niece's first and last love, shuddered as he guessed his nephew's
hypocritical nature and the man's intrigues. Du Bousquier,
be it said, put some constraint upon himself; he had an eye
to the Abbe's property, and had no wish to annoy his wife's
uncle in any way, yet he dealt the old man his death-blow.

If you can translate the word Intolerance by Firmness of
Principle ; if you can forbear to condemn in the old Eoman
Catholic Vicar-General that stoicism which Scott has taught
us to revere in Jeanie Deans' Puritan father; if, finally, you
can recognize in the Roman Church the nobility of a Potius
mori quam foedari which you admire in a Republican — then]
you can understand the anguish that rent the great Abbe de j
Sponde when he saw the apostate in his nephew's drawing- 1
room ; when he was compelled to meet the renegade, the back- 1
slider, the enemy of the Church, the aider and abettor of the |
Oath to the Constitution. It was du Bousquier's private ambi-
tion to lord it over the countryside ; and as a first proof of hisj
power, he determined to reconcile the officiating priest of St. J

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 135

Leonard's with the cure of Alengon. He gained his object.
His wife imagined that peace had been made where the stern
Abbe saw no peace, but surrender of principle. M. de Sponde
was left alone in the faith. The Bishop came to du Bous-
quier's house, and appeared satisfied with the cessation of hos-
tilities. The Abbe Frangois' goodness had conquered every
one — every one except the old Roman of the Roman Church,
who might have cried with Cornelie, "Ah, God ! what virtues
you make me hate !" The Abbe de Sponde died when ortho-
doxy expired in the diocese.

In 1819 the Abbe de Sponde's property raised Mme. du
Bousquier's income from land to twenty-five thousand livres
without counting the Prebaudet or the house in the Val-
Noble. About the same time du Bousquier returned the
amount of his wife's savings (which she had made over to
him), and instructed her to invest the moneys in purchases
of land near the Prebaudet, so that the estate, including the
Abbe de Sponde's adjoining property, was one of the largest
in the department. As for du Bousquier, he invested his
money with the Kellers, and made a journey to Paris four
times a year. Nobody knew the exact amount of his private
fortune, but at this time he was supposed to be one of the
wealthiest men in the department of the Orne. A dexterous
man, and the permanent candidate of the Liberal party, he
always lost his election by seven or eight votes under the
Restoration. Ostensibly he repudiated his connection with
the Liberals, offering himself as a Ministerial-Royalist candi-
date; but although he succeeded in gaining the support of
the Congregation and of the magistrature, the repugnance of
the administration was too strong to be overcome,

Then the rabid Republican, frantic with ambition, con-
ceived the idea of beginning a struggle with the Royalism
and Aristocracy of the country, just as they were carrying all
before them. He gained the support of the clergy by an ap-
pearance of piety very skilfully kept up; always going with
his wife to mass, giving money to the convents, and support-
ing the confraternity of the Sacre-Cceur ; and whenever a dis-

136 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

pute arose between the clergy and the town, or the department,
or the State, he was very careful to take the clerical side.
And so, while secretly supported by the Liberals, he gained
the influence of the Church ; and as a Constitutional-Koyalist
kept close beside the aristocratic section, the better to ruin
it. And ruin it he did. He was always on the watch for any
mistake on the part of those high in rank or in office under
the Government ; with the support of the bourgeoisie he car-
ried out all the improvements which the nobles and officials
ought to have undertaken and directed, if the imbecile jeal-
ousies of place had not frustrated their efforts. Constitu-
tional opinion carried him through in the affair of the cure,
in the theatre question, and in all the various schemes of im-
provement which du Bousquier first prompted the Liberals to
make, and afterwards supported in the course of debate, de-
claring himself in favor of any measures for the good of the
country. He brought about an industrial revolution ; and his
detestation of certain families on the highroad to Brittany
rapidly increased the material prosperity of the province.

And so he paved the way for his revenge upon the gens a
chateaux in general, and the d'Esgrignons in particular;
some day, not so very far distant, he would plunge a poisoned
blade into the very heart of the clique. He found capital to
revive the manufacture of point d'Alengon and to increase the
linen trade. Alengon began to spin its own flax by machinery.
And while his name was associated with all these interests,
and written in the hearts of the masses, while he did all that
Eoyalty left undone, du Bousquier risked not a farthing of
his own. With his means, he could afford to wait while
enterprising men with little capital were obliged to give up
and leave the results of their labors to luckier successors. He
posed as a banker. A Laffitte on a small scale, he became a
sleeping partner in all new inventions, taking security for his
money. And as a public benefactor, he did remarkably well
for himself. He was a promoter of insurance companies, a;
patron of new public conveyances; he got up memorials fori
necessary roads and bridges. The authorities, being left be-

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 137

hind in this way, regarded this activity in the light of an en-
croachment; they blundered, and put themselves in the
wrong, for the prefecture was obliged to give way for the good
of the country.

Du Bousquier embittered the provincial noblesse against
the court nobles and the peerage. He helped, in short, to
bring it to pass that a very large body of Constitutional-
Eoyalists supported the Journal des Debats and M. de Cha-
teaubriand in a contest with the throne. It was an ungrateful
opposition based on ignoble motives which contributed to
bring about the triumph of the bourgeoisie and the press in
1830. Wherefore du Bousquier, like those whom he repre-
sented, had the pleasure of watching a funeral procession of
Royalty* pass through their district without a single demon-
stration of sympathy from a population alienated from them
in ways so numerous that they cannot be indicated here.

Then the old Eepublican, with all that weight of masses
on his conscience, hauled down the white flag above the town-
hall amid the applause of the people. For fifteen years he
had acted a part to satisfy his vendetta, and no man in France
beholding the new throne raised in August 1830 could feel
more intoxicated than he with the joy of revenge. For him,
the succession of the younger branch meant the triumph of the
Eevolution ; for him, the hoisting of the Tricolor flag was the
resurrection of the Mountain ; and this time the nobles should
be brought low by a surer method than the guillotine, in that
its action should be less violent. A peerage for life only ; a Na-
tional Guard which stretches the marquis and the grocer from
the corner shop on the same camp bed ; the abolition of entail
demanded by a bourgeois barrister; a Catholic Church de-
prived of its supremacy; in short, all the legislative inven-
tions of August 1830 simply meant for du Bousquier the
principles of 1793 carried out in a most ingenious manner.

Du Bousquier has been receiver-general of taxes since 1830.
He relied for success upon his old connections with Egalite
Orleans (father of Louis Philippe) and M. de Folman, stew-
Charles X. on his way to England.

138 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

ard of the Dowager Duchess. He is supposed to have an in-
come of eighty thousand livres. In the eyes of his fellow-
countrymen, Monsieur du Bousquier is a man of substance,
honorable, upright, obliging, unswerving in his principles.
To him, Alengon owes her participation in the industrial
movement which makes her, as it were, the first link in a
chain which some day perhaps may bind Brittany to the state
of things which we nickname "modern civilization." In 1816
Alengon boasted but two carriages, properly speaking; ten
years afterwards, caleches, coupes, landaus, cabriolets, and
tilburies were rolling about the streets without causing any
astonishment. At first the townsmen and landowners were
alarmed by the rise of prices, afterwards they discovered that
the increased expenditure produced a corresponding increase
in their incomes.

Du Bonceret's prophetic words, "Du Bousquier is a very
strong man," were now taken up by the country. But, unfor-
tunately for du Bousquier's wife, the remark is a shocking
misnomer. Du Bousquier the husband is a very different
person from du Bousquier the public man and politician. The
great citizen, so liberal in his opinions, so easy humored, so
full of love for his country, is a despot at home, and has not
a particle of love for his wife. The Cromwell of the Val-Noble
is profoundly astute, hypocritical, and crafty; he behaves to
those of his own household as he behaved to the aristocrats on
whom he fawned, until he could cut their throats. Like his
friend Bernadotte, he has an iron hand in a velvet glove. His
wife gave him no children. Suzanne's epigram, and the
Chevalier de Valois' insinuations, were justified ; but the Lib-
erals and Constitutional-Eoyalists among the townspeople,
the little squires, the magistrature, and the "clericals" (as the
Constitutionnel used to say), all threw the blame upon Mmc.
du Bousquier. M. du Bousquier had married such an elderly
wife, they said; and besides, how lucky it was for her, pooii
thing, for at her age bearing a child meant such a risk. If!
in periodically recurrent despair, Mme. du Bousquier confided
her troubles with tears to Mme. du Coudrai or Mme. di!
Ronceret—

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 133

"Why you must be mad, dear !" those ladies would reply.
"You do not know what you want; a child would be the death
of you."

Men like M. du Coudrai, who followed du Bousquier's lead
because they fastened their hopes to his success, would prompt
their wives to sing du Bousquier's praises; and Eose must
listen to speeches that wounded like a stab.

"You are very fortunate, dear, to have such a capable hus-
band; some men have no energy, and can neither manage
their own property nor bring up their children ; you are spared
these troubles/'

Or, "Your husband is making you queen of the district,
fair lady. He will never leave you at a loss; he does every-
thing in Alengon."

"But I should like him to take less trouble for the public
and rather v

"My dear Mme. du Bousquier, you are very hard to please ;
all the women envy you your husband."

Unjustly treated by a world which condemned her without
a hearing, she found ample scope for the exercise of Christian
virtues in her inner life. She who lived in tears always
turned a serene face upon the world. For her, pious soul,
was there not sin in the thought which was always pecking at
her heart — "I loved the Chevalier de Valois, and I am du
Bousquier's wife !" Athanase's love rose up like a remorse to
haunt her dreams. After her uncle's death and the revelation
of all that he had suffered, the future grew yet more dreadful
as she thought how grieved he would have been by such
changes of political and religious doctrine. Unhappiness often
falls like a thunderbolt, as upon Mme. Granson, for instance ;
but Eose's misery gradually widened out before her as a drop
of oil spreads over stuff, slowly saturating every fibre.

The Chevalier de Valois was the malignant artificer of her
misfortune. He had it on his mind to snatch his opportunity
and undeceive Mme. du Bousquier as to one of her articles of
faith ; for the Chevalier, a man of experience, saw through dix
JSousquier the married man, as he had seen through du Bous-

140 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

quier the bachelor. But it was not easy to take the astute
Republican by surprise. His salon, naturally, was closed to
the Chevalier de Valois, as to. all others who discontinued
their visits to the Maison Cormon at the time of his marriage.
And besides, du Bousquier was above the reach of ridicule;
he possessed an immense fortune, he was king of Alengon;
and as for his wife, he cared about her much as Eichard III.
might have cared for the loss of the horse with which he
thought to win the battle. To please her husband, Mme. du
Bousquier had broken with the Maison d'Esgrignon, but some-
times, when he was away at Paris for a few days, she paid
Mile. Armande a visit.

Two years after Mme. du Bousquier's marriage, just at the
time of the Abbe's death, Mile. Armande went up to her as
she came out of church. Both women had been to St. Leon-
ard's to hear a messe noire said for M. de Sponde ; and Mile.
Armande, a generous-natured woman, thinking that she ought
to try to comfort the weeping heiress, walked with her as far
as the Parade. From the Parade, still talking of the beloved
and lost, they came to the forbidden Hotel d'Esgrignon, and
Mile. Armande drew Mme. du Bousquier into the house by
the charm of her talk. Perhaps the poor broken-hearted
woman loved to speak of her uncle with some one whom her
uncle had loved so well. And besides, she wished to receive
the old Marquis' greetings after an interval of nearly three
years. It was half -past one o'clock; the Chevalier de Valois
had come to dinner, and with a bow he held out both hands.

"Ah ! well, dear, good, and well-beloved lady," he said trem-
ulously, "we have lost our sainted friend. Your mourning is
ours. Yes ; your loss is felt as deeply here as under your roof
— more deeply," he added, alluding to du Bousquier.

A funeral oration followed, to which every one contributed
his phrase; then the Chevalier, gallantly taking the lady's
hand, drew it under his arm, pressed it in the most adorable
way, and led her aside into the embrasure of a window.

"You are happy, at any rate ?" he asked with a fatherly tone
in his voice,

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 141

"Yes," she said, lowering her eyes.

Hearing that "Yes," Mme. de Troisville (daughter of the
Princess Scherbelloff) and the old Marquise de Casteran came
up; Mile. Armande also joined them, and the group took a
turn in the garden till dinner should be ready. Mme. du
Bousquier was so stupid with grief that she did not notice
that a little conspiracy of curiosity was on foot among the
ladies.

"We have her here, let us find out the answer to the riddle,"
the glances exchanged among them seemed to say.

"You should have children to make your happiness com-
plete," began Mile. Armande, "a fine boy like my nephew

Tears came to Mme. du Bousquier's eyes.

"I have heard it said that it was entirely your own fault
if you had none," said the Chevalier, "that you were afraid of
the risk."

"11" she cried, innocently; "I would endure a hundred
years in hell to have a child."

The subject thus broached, Mme. la Vicomtesse de Trois-
ville and the dowager Marquise de Casteran steered the con-
versation with such exceeding tact, that they entangled poor
Eose until, all unsuspectingly, she revealed the secrets of her
married life. Mile. Armande laid her hand on the Chevalier's
arm, and they left the three matrons to talk confidentially.
Then Mme. du Bousquier's mind was disabused with regard
to the deception of her marriage; and as she was still "a
natural," she amused her confidantes with her irresistible
naivete. Before long the whole town was in the secret of du
Bousquier's manoeuvres, and knew that Mile. Cormon's mar-
riage was a mockery; but after the first burst of laughter,
Mme. du Bousquier gained the esteem and sympathy of every
woman in it. While Mile. Cormon rushed unsuccessfully at
opportunities of establishing herself, every one had laughed;
but people admired her when they knew the position in which
she was placed by the severity of her religious principles.
"Poor, dear Mile. Cormon !" was replaced by "poor Mme. du
Bousquier V

142 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

In this way the Chevalier made du Bousquier both ridicu-
lous and very unpopular for a while, but the ridicule died
down with time ; the slander languished when everybody had
cut his joke ; and besides, it seemed to many persons that the
mute Eepublican had a right to retire at the age of fifty-seven.
But if du Bousquier previously hated the Maison d'Esgrignon,
this incident so increased his rancor that he was pitiless after-
wards in the day of vengeance. Mme. du Bousquier received
orders never to set foot in that house again; and by way of
reprisals, he inserted the following paragraph in the Orne
Courier, his own new paper :

"A Eeward of rente to bring in a thousand francs will be
paid to any person who shall prove that one M. de Pombreton
existed either before or after the Emigration."

Though Mme. du Bousquier's happiness was essentially
negative, she saw that her marriage had its advantages. Was
it not better to take an interest in the most remarkable man
in the place than to live alone ? After all, du Bousquier was
better than the dogs, cats, and canaries on which old maids
centre their affections ; and his feeling for his wife was some-
thing more genuine and disinterested than the attachment
of servants, confessors, and legacy-hunters. At a still later
period she looked upon her husband as an instrument in God's
hands to punish her for the innumerable sins which she dis-
covered in her desires for marriage; she regarded herself as
justly rewarded for the misery which she had brought on
Mme. Granson, and for hastening her own uncle's end. Obedi-
ent to a religious faith which bade her kiss the rod, she praised
her husband in public; but in the confessional, or over her
prayers at night, she often wept and entreated God to pardon
the apostate who said one thing and thought another, who
wished for the destruction of the order of nobles and the
Church, the two religious of the Maison Cormon. Living in
an uncongenial atmosphere, compelled to suppress herself,
compelled likewise by a sense of duty to make her husband

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 143

happy, and to injure him in nothing, she became attached to
him with an indefinable affection, perhaps the result of use
and wont. Her life was a perpetual contradiction. She felt
the strongest aversion for the conduct and opinions of the
man she had married, and yet it was her duty to take a tender
interest in him; and if, as often happened, du Bousquier ate
her preserves, or thought that the dinner was good, she was
in the seventh heaven. She saw that his comfort was secured
even in the smallest details. If he left the wrapper of his
newspaper on the table, there it must remain.

"Leave it, Bene," she would say, "the master had some
reason for putting it there."

Did du Bousquier go on a journey ? She fidgeted over his
traveling cloak and his linen; she took the most minute pre-
cautions for his material comfort. If he was going over to the
Prebaudet, she began to consult the weather glass twenty-four
hours beforehand. A sleeping dog has eyes and ears for his
master, and so it was with Mme. du Bousquier; she used to
watch the expression of her husband's face to read his wishes.
And if that burly personage, vanquished by duty-prescribed
love, caught her by the waist and kissed her on the forehead,
exclaiming, "You are a good woman !" tears of joy filled the
poor creature's eyes. It is probable that du Bousquier felt it
incumbent upon him to make compensations which won Eose
Marie Victoire's respect ; for the Church does not require that
an assumption of wifely devotion should be carried quite so
far as Mme. du Bousquier thought necessary. And yet when
she listened to the rancorous talk of men who took Constitu-
tional-Royalism as a cloak for their real opinions, the woman
of saintly life uttered not a word. She foresaw the downfall
of the Church, and shuddered. Very occasionally she would
hazard some foolish remark, promptly cut in two by a look
from du Bousquier. In the end this life at cross-purposes had
a benumbing influence on Mme. du Bousquier's wits; she
found it both simpler and more dignified to keep her mind to
herself, and led outward! v a mere animal existence. She grrew

slavishly submissive, making a virtue of the abject condition
vol. 7 — 32

144 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

to which her husband had reduced her ; she did her husband's
will without murmuring in the least. The timid sheep walked
in the way marked out by the shepherd; never leaving the
bosom of the Church, practising austerities, without a thought
of the Devil, his pomps and works. And so, within herself
she united the purest Christian virtues, and du Bousquier
truly was one of the luckiest men in the kingdom of France
and Navarre.

"She will be a simpleton till her last sigh," said the cruel
ex-registrar (now cashiered). But, all the same, he dined
at her table twice a week.

The story would be singularly incomplete if it omitted to
mention a last coincidence; the Chevalier de Valois and
Suzanne's mother died at the same time.

The Chevalier died with the Monarchy in August 1830.
He went to Nonancourt to join the funeral procession ; piously
making one of the King's escort to Cherbourg, with the Trois-
villes, Casterans, d'Esgrignons, Verneuils, and the rest. He
had brought with him his little hoard of savings and the
principal which brought him in his annual income, some fifty
thousand francs in all, which he offered to a faithful friend
of the elder branch to convey to His Majesty. His own death
was very near, he said; the money had come to him through
the King's bounty; and, after all, the property of the last of
the Valois belonged to the Crown. History does not say
whether the Chevalier's fervent zeal overcame the repugnance
of the Bourbon who left his fair kingdom of France without
taking one farthing into exile; but the King surely must
have been touched by the old noble's devotion ; and this much
is at least certain — Cesarine, M. de Valois' universal legatee,
inherited scarcely six hundred livres of income at his death.
The Chevalier came back to Alen^on, broken-hearted and
spent with the fatigue of the journey, to die just as Charles
X. set foot on foreign soil.

Mme. du Val-Noble and her journalist protector, fearing
reprisals from the Liberals, were glad of an excuse to return
incognito to the village where the old mother died. Suzanne

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 145

attended the sale of the Chevalier's furniture to buy some relic
of her first good friend, and ran up the price of the snuff-box
to the enormous amount of a thousand francs. The Princess
Goritza's portrait alone was worth that sum. Two years
afterwards, a young man of fashion, struck with its marvelous
workmanship, obtained it of Suzanne for his collection of
fine eighteenth century snuff-boxes; and so the delicate toy
which had been the confidant of the most courtly of love
affairs, and the delight of an old age till its very end, is now
brought into the semi-publicity of a collection. If the dead
could know what is done after they are gone, there would be
a flush at this moment on the Chevalier's left cheek.

If this history should inspire owners of sacred relics with
a holy fear, and set them drafting codicils to provide for the
fate of such precious souvenirs of a happiness now no more,
by giving them into sympathetic hands ; even so an enormous
service would have been rendered to the chivalrous and senti-
mental section of the public; but it contains another and a
much more exalted moral. . . . Does it not show that a
new branch of education is needed? Is it not an appeal to
the so enlightened solicitude of Ministers of Public Instruc-
tion to create chairs of anthropology, a science in which Ger-
many is outstripping us ?

Modern myths are even less understood of the people than
ancient myths, eaten up with myths though we may be.
Fables crowd in upon us on every side, allegory is pressed into
service on all occasions to explain everything. If fables are
the torches of history, as the humanist school maintains, they
may be a means of securing empires from revolution, if only
professors of history will undertake that their interpretations
thereof shall permeate the masses in the departments. If
Mile. Cormon had had some knowledge of literature ; if there
had been a professor of anthropology in the department of
the Orne; if (a final if) she had read her Ariosto, would the
appalling misfortune of her marriage have befallen her ? She
would, perhaps, have found out for herself why the Italian
poet makes his heroine Angelica prefer Medoro (a suave

140 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Chevalier de Valois) to Orlando, who had lost his mare, and
could do nothing but work himself into a fury. Might not
Medoro be taken as an allegorical figure as the courtier of
woman's sovereignty, whereas Orlando is revolution personi-
fied, an undisciplined, furious, purely destructive force, in-
capable of producing anything? This is the opinion of one
of M. Ballanche's pupils ; we publish it, declining all respon-
sibility.

As for the tiny negroes' heads, no information of any kind
concerning them is forthcoming. Mme. du Val- Noble you
may see any day at the Opera. Thanks to the primary edu-
cation given to her by the Chevalier de Valois, she looks al-
most like a woman who makes a necessity of virtue, while in
truth she only exists by virtue of necessity.

Mme. du Bousquier is still living, which is to say, is it not,
that her troubles are not yet over? At sixty, when women
can permit themselves to make admissions, talking confiden-
tially to Mme. du Coudrai, whose husband was reinstated in
August 1830, she said that the thought that she must die with-
out knowing what it was to be a wife and mother was more
than she could bear

Paris, October 1836.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 147

THE COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES

To Baron Yon Hammer -Pur g stall

Member of the Aulic Council, Author of the History of the

Ottoman Empire.

Dear Baron,— You have taken so warm an interest In my long,
vast "History of French Manners in the Nineteenth Century,"
you have given me so much encouragement to persevere with
my work, that you have given me a right to associate your name
with some portion of it. Are you not one of the most important
representatives of conscientious, studious Germany? Will not
your approval win for me the approval of others, and protect
this attempt of mine? So proud am I to have gained your good
opinion, that I have striven to deserve it by continuing my labors
with the unflagging courage characteristic of your methods of
study, and of that exhaustive research among documents with-
out which you could never have given your monumental work
to the world of letters. Your sympathy with such labor as you
yourself have bestowed upon the most brilliant civilization of
the East, has often sustained my ardor through nights of toil
given to the details of our modern civilization. And will not
you, whose naive kindliness can only be compared with that
of our own La Fontaine, be glad to know of this?

May this token of my respect for you and your work find you
at Dobling, dear Baron, and put you and yours in mind of one
of your most sincere admirers and friends. De Balzao.

148 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

There stands a house at a corner of a street, in the middle
of a town, in one of the least important prefectures in France,
but the name of the street and the name of the town must be
suppressed here. Every one will appreciate the motives of
this sage reticence demanded by convention; for if a writer
takes upon himself the office of annalist of his own time, he is
bound to touch on many sore subjects. The house was called
the Hotel d'Esgrignon; but let d'Esgrignon be considered a
mere fancy name, neither more nor less connected with real
people than the conventional Belval, Floricour, or Derville of
the stage, or the Adalberts and Mombreuses of romance. After
all, the names of the principal characters will be quite as
much disguised; for though in this history the chronicler
would prefer to conceal the facts under a mass of contradic-
tions, anachronisms, improbabilities, and absurdities, the
truth will out in spite of him. You uproot a vine-stock, as
you imagine, and the stem will send up lusty shoots after you
have ploughed your vineyard over.

The "Hotel d'Esgrignon" was nothing more nor less than
the house in which the old Marquis lived; or, in the style of
ancient documents, Charles Marie Victor Ange Carol, Marquis
d'Esgrignon. It was only an ordinary house, but the towns-
people and tradesmen had begun by calling it the Hotel
d'Esgrignon in jest, and ended after a score of years by giv-
ing it that name in earnest.

The name of Carol, or Karawl, as the Thierrys would have
spelt it, was glorious among the names of the most powerful
chieftains of the Northmen who conquered Gaul and estab-
lished the feudal system there. Never had Carol bent his head
before King or Communes, the Church or Finance. In-
trusted in the days of yore with the keeping of a French
March, the title of marquis in their family meant no shadow
of imaginary office; it had been a post of honor with duties to
discharge. Their fief had always been their domain. Pro-
vincial nobles were they in every sense of the word; they
might boast of an unbroken line of great descent; they had
been neglected by the court for two hundred years ; they were

THE JEALOUSIES pF A COUNTRY TOWN 149

lords paramount in the estates of a province where the people
looked up to them with superstitious awe, as to the image
of the Holy Virgin that cures the toothache. The house of
d'Esgrignon, buried in its remote border country, was pre-
served as the charred piles of one of Caesar's bridges are
maintained intact in a river bed. For thirteen hundred
years the daughters of the house had been married without a
dowry or taken the veil; the younger sons of every genera-
tion had been content with their share of their mother's
dower and gone forth to be captains or bishops; some had
made a marriage at court; one cadet of the house became an
admiral, a duke, and a peer of France, and died without issue.
Never would the Marquis d'Esgrignon of the elder branch ac-
cept the title of duke.

"I hold my marquisate as His Majesty holds the realm of
France, and on the same conditions," he told the Constable
de Luynes, a very paltry fellow in his eyes at that time.

You may be sure that d'Esgrignons lost their heads on the
scaffold during the troubles. The old blood showed itself
proud and high even in 1789. The Marquis of that day
would not emigrate ; he was answerable for his March. The
reverence in which he was held by the countryside saved his
head; but the hatred of the genuine sans-culottes was strong
enough to compel him to pretend to fly, and for a while he
lived in hiding. Then, in the name of the Sovereign People,
the d'Esgrignon lands were dishonored by the District, and
the woods sold by the Nation in spite of the personal protest
made by the Marquis, then turned of forty. Mile.
d'Esgrignon, his half-sister, saved some portions of the fief,
thanks to the 3roung steward of the family, who claimed on
her behalf the partage de presuccession, which is to say, the
right of a relative to a portion of an emigre's lands. To
Mile. d'Esgrignon, therefore, the Republic made over the
castle itself and a few farms. Chesnel, the faithful steward,
was obliged to buy in his own name the church, the parsonage
house, the castle gardens, and other places to which his
patron was attached — the Marquis advancing the money.

150 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

The slow, swift years of the Terror went by, and the Mar-
quis, whose character had won the respect of the whole
country, decided that he and his sister ought to return to the
castle and improve the property which Maitre Chesnel — for
he was now a notary — had contrived to save for them out of
the wreck. Alas! was not the plundered and dismantled
castle all too vast for a lord of the manor shorn of all his
ancient rights ; too large for the landowner whose woods had
been sold piecemeal, until he could scarce draw nine thousand
francs of income from the pickings of his old estates ?

It was in the month of October 1800 that Chesnel brought
the Marquis back to the old feudal castle, and saw with deep
emotion, almost beyond control, his patron standing in the
midst of the empty courtyard, gazing round upon the moat,
now filled up with rubbish, and the castle towers razed to
the level of the roof. The descendant of the Franks looked
for the missing Gothic turrets and the picturesque weather
vanes which used to rise above them; and his eyes turned to
the sky, as if asking of heaven the reason of this social up-
heaval. No one but Chesnel could understand the profound
anguish of the great d'Esgrignon, now known as Citizen
Carol. For a long while the Marquis stood in silence, drink-
ing in the influences of the place, the ancient home of his
forefathers, with the air that he breathed; then he flung out
a most melancholy exclamation.

"Chesnel," he said, "we will come back again some day
when the troubles are over; I could not bring myself to live
here until the edict of pacification has been published; they
will not allow me to set my scutcheon on the wall."

He waved his hand toward the castle, mounted his horse,
and rode back beside his sister, who had driven over in the
notary's shabby basket-chaise.

The Hotel d'Esgrignon in the town had been demolished ;
a couple of factories now stood on the site of the aristocrat's
house. So Maftre Chesnel spent the Marquis' last bag of
louis on the purchase of the old-fashioned building in the
square, with its gables, weather-vane, turret, and dovecote.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 151

Once it had been the courthouse of the bailiwick, and sub-
sequently the presidial; it had belonged to the d'Esgrignons
from generation to generation; and now, in consideration of
five hundred louis d'or, the present owner made it over with
the title given by the Nation to its rightful lord. And so,
half in jest, half in earnest, the old house was chrstened the
Hotel d'Esgrignon.

In 1800 little or no difficulty was made over erasing names
from the fatal list, and some few emigres began to return.
Among the very first nobles to come back to the old town were
the Baron de Nouastre and his daughter. They were com-
pletely ruined. M. d'Esgrignon generously offered them the
shelter of his roof; and in his house, two months later, the
Baron died, worn out with grief. The Nouastres came of the
best blood of the province; Mile, de Nouastre was a girl of
two-and-twenty ; the Marquis d'Esgrignon married her to
continue his line. But she died in childbirth, a victim to the
unskilfulness of her physician, leaving, most fortunately, a
son to bear the name of the d'Esgrignons. The old Marqui?
— he was but fifty-three, but adversity and sharp distress had
added months to every year — the poor old Marquis saw the
death of the loveliest of human creatures, a noble woman ir
whom the charm of the feminine figures of the sixteenth
century lived again, a charm now lost save to men's imagina-
tions. With her death the joy died out of his old age. It
was one of those terrible shocks which reverberate through
every moment of the years that follow. For a few moments
he stood beside, the bed where his wife lay, with her hands
folded like a saint, then he kissed her on the forehead, turned
away, drew out his watch, broke the mainspring, and hung
it up beside the hearth. It was eleven o'clock in the
morning.

"Mile. d'Esgrignon," he said, "let us pray God that this
hour may not prove fatal yet again to our house. My uncle
the archbishop was murdered at this hour; at this hour also
my father died "

He knelt down beside the bed and buried his face in the

1S2 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

coverlet; his sister did the same, in another moment they
both rose to their feet. Mile. d'Esgrignon bnrst into
tears; but the old Marquis looked with dry eyes at the
child, round the room, and again on his dead wife.
To the stubbornness of the Frank he united the fortitude of a
Christian.

These things came to pass in the second }'ear of the nine-
teenth century. Mile. d'Esgrignon was then twent}^-seven
years of age. She was a beautiful woman. . An ex-contractor
for forage to the armies of the Eepublic, a man of the district,
with an income of six thousand francs, persuaded Chesnel to
carry a proposal of marriage to the lady. The Marquis and
his sister were alike indignant with such presumption in their
man of business, and Chesnel was almost heartbroken; he
could not forgive himself for yielding to the Sieur du
Croisier's blandishments. The Marquis' manner with his old
servant changed somewhat; never again was there quite the
old affectionate kindliness, which might almost have been
taken for friendship. From that time forth the Marquis was
grateful, and his magnanimous and sincere gratitude con-
tinually wounded the poor notary's feelings. To some
sublime natures gratitude seems an excessive payment; they
would rather have that sweet equality of feeling which springs
from similar ways of thought, and the blending of two spirits
by their own choice and will. And Maitre Chesnel had
known the delights of such high friendship ; the Marquis had
raised him to his own level. The old noble looked on the good
notary as something more than a servant, something less than
a child; he was the voluntary liege man of the house, a
serf bound to his lord by all the ties of affection. There was
no balancing of obligations; the sincere affection on either
side put them out of the question.

In the eyes of the Marquis, Chesnel's official dignity was
as nothing ; his old servitor was merely disguised as a notary.
As for Chesnel, the Marquis was now, as always, a being of a |
divine race; he believed in nobility; he did not blush to re-
member that his father had thrown open the doors of the j
salon to announce that "My Lord Marquis is served." His

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 153

devotion to the fallen house was due not so much to his creed
as to egoism ; he looked on himself as one of the family. So
his vexation was intense. Once he had ventured to allude to
his mistake in spite of the Marquis' prohibition, and the old
noble answered gravely — "Chesnel, before the troubles you
would not have permitted yourself to entertain such injurious
suppositions. What can these new doctrines be if they have
spoiled you?'*

Maitre Chesnel had gained the confidence of the whole
town; people looked up to him; his high integrity and con-
siderable fortune contributed to make him a person of im-
portance. From that time forth he- felt a very decided
aversion for the Sieur du Croisier; and though there was
little rancor in his composition, he set others against the
sometime forage-contractor. Du Croisier, on the other hand,
was a man to bear a grudge and nurse a vengeance for a
score of years. He hated Chesnel and the d'Esgrignon family
with the smothered, all-absorbing hate only to be found in a
country town. His rebuff had simply ruined him with the
malicious provincials among whom he had come to live, think-
ing to rule over them. It was so real a disaster that he was
not long in feeling the consequences of it. He betook himself
in desperation to a wealthy old maid, and met with a second
refusal. Thus failed the ambitious schemes with which he
had started. He had lost his hope of a marriage with Mile.
d'Esgrignon, which would have opened the Faubourg Saint-
Germain of the province to him; and after the second re-
jection, his credit fell away to such an extent that it was
almost as much as he could do to keep his position in the
second rank.

In 1805, M. de la Koche-Guyon, the oldest son of an ancient
family which had previously intermarried with the
d'Esgrignons, made proposals in form through Maitre Chesnel
for Mile. Marie Armande Claire d'Esgrignon. She declined
to hear the notary.

"You must have guessed before now that I am a mother,
dear Chesnel," she said; she had just put her nephew, a fine
little boy of five, to bed.

154 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

The old Marquis rose and went up to his sister, but just
returned from the cradle ; he kissed her hand reverently, and
as he sat down again, found words to say:

"My sister, you are a d'Esgrignon."

A quiver ran through the noble girl ; the tears stood in her
eyes. M. d'Esgrignon, the father of the present Marquis, had
married a second wife, the daughter of a farmer of taxes
ennobled by Louis XIV. It was a shocking mesalliance in
the eyes of his family, but fortunately of no importance,
since a daughter was the one child of the marriage. Armande
knew this. Kind as her brother had always been, he looked
on her as a stranger in blood. And this speech of his had
just recognized her as one of the family.

And was not her answer the worthy crown of eleven years
of her noble life ? Her every action since she came of age had
borne the stamp of the purest devotion; love for her brother
was a sort of religion with her.

"I shall die Mile. d'Esgrignon," she said simply, turning
to the notary.

"For you there could be no fairer title," returned Chesnel,
meaning to convey a compliment. Poor Mile. d'Esgrignon
reddened.

"You have blundered, Chesnel," said the Marquis, flattered
by the steward's words, but vexed that his sister had been
hurt. "A d'Esgrignon may marry a Montmorency; their
descent is not so pure as ours. The d'Esgrignons bear or,
two bends , gules/' he continued, "and nothing during nine
hundred years has changed their scutcheon ; as it was at first,
so it is to-day. Hence our device, Oil est nostre, taken at a
tournament in the reign of Philip Augustus, with the sup-
porters, a knight in armor or on the right, and a lion gules
on the left."

"I do not remember that any woman I have ever met has
struck my imagination as Mile. d'Esgrignon did," said Emilc
Blondet, to whom contemporary literature is indebted for
this history among other things. "Truth to tell, I was a

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 155

boy, a mere child at the time, and perhaps my memory-pict-
ures of her owe something of their vivid color to a boy's
natural turn for the marvelous.

"If I was playing with other children on the Parade, and
she came to walk there with her nephew Victurnien, the
sight of her in the distance thrilled me with very much the
effect of galvanism on a dead body. Child as I was, I felt
as though new life had been given me.

"Mile. Armande had hair of tawny gold ; there was a deli-
cate fine down on her cheek, with a silver gleam upon it which
I loved to catch, putting myself so that I could see the out-
lines of her face lit up by the daylight, and feel the fascina-
tion of those dreamy emerald eyes, which sent a flash of fire
through me whenever they fell upon my face. I used to pre-
tend to roll on the grass before her in our games, only to try
to reach her little feet, and admire them on a closer vit»w.
The soft whiteness of her skin, her delicate features, the
clearly cut lines of her forehead, the grace of her slender
figure, took me with a sense of surprise, while as yet I did not
know that her shape was graceful, nor her brows beautiful,
nor the outline of her face a perfect oval. I admired as
children pray at that age, without too clearly understanding
why they pray. When my piercing gaze attracted her notice,
when she asked me (in that musical voice of hers, with more
volume in it, as it seemed to me, than all other voices), 'What
are you doing, little one ? Why do you look at me ?' — I used
to come nearer and wriggle and bite my finger-nails, and
redden and say, 'I do not know.' And if she chanced to
stroke my hair with her white hand, and ask me how old I
was, I would run away and call from a distance, 'Eleven !'

"Every princess and fairy of my visions, as I read the
Arabian Nights, looked and walked like Mile. d'Esgrignon;
and afterwards, when my drawing-master gave me heads from
the antique to copy, I noticed that their hair was braided like
Mile. d'Esgrignon's. Still later, when the foolish fancies had
vanished one by one, Mile. Armande remained vaguely in my
memory as a type; that Mile. Armande for whom men made

156 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

way respectfully, following the tall brown-robed figure with
their eyes along the Parade and out of sight. Her ex-
quisitely graceful form, the rounded curves sometimes revealed
by a chance gust of wind, and always visible to my eyes in
spite of the ample folds of stuff, revisited my young man's
dreams. Later yet, when I came to think seriously over cer-
tain mysteries of human thought, it seemed to me that the
feeling of reverence was first inspired in me by something
expressed in Mile. d'Esgrignon's face and bearing. The won-
derful calm of her face, the suppressed passion in it, the
dignity of her movements, the saintly life of duties fulfilled,
— all this touched and awed me. Children are more suscepti-
ble than people imagine to the subtle influences of ideas;
they never make game of real dignity ; they feel the charm of
real graciousness, and beauty attracts them, for childhood it-
self is beautiful, and there are mysterious ties between things
of the same nature.

"Mile. d'Esgrignon was one of my religions. To this day
I can never climb the staircase of some old manor-house but
my foolish imagination must needs picture Mile. Armande
standing there, like the spirit of feudalism. I can never read
old chronicles but she appears before my eyes in the shape of
some famous woman of old times ; she is Agnes Sorel, Marie
Touchet, Gabrielle ; and I lend her all the love that was lost
in her heart, all the love that she never expressed. The
angel shape seen in glimpses through the haze of childish
fancies visits me now sometimes across the mists of
dreams."

Keep this portrait in mind.; it is a faithful picture and
sketch of character. Mile. d'Esgrignon is one of the most in-
structive figures in this story; she affords an example of the
mischief that may be done by the purest goodness for lack
of intelligence.

Two-thirds of the emigres returned to France during 1804
and 1805, and almost every exile from the Marquis d'Esgri-
gnon's province came back to the land of his fathers. There

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 15?

were certainly defections. Men of good birth entered the
service of Napoleon, and went into the army or held places
at the Imperial court, and others made alliances with the
upstart families. All those who cast in their lots with the
Empire retrieved their fortunes and recovered their estates,
thanks to the Emperor's munificence ; and these for the most
part went to Paris and stayed there. But some eight or nine
families still remained true to the proscribed noblesse and
loyal to the fallen monarchy. The La Roche-Guyons,
Nouastres, Verneuils, Casterans, Troisvilles, and the rest were
some of them rich, some of them poor; but mone}% more or
less, scarcely counted for anything among them. They took
an antiquarian view of themselves; for them the age and
preservation of the pedigree was the one all-important mat-
ter; precisely as, for an amateur, the weight of metal in a
coin is a small matter in comparison with clean lettering, a
flawless stamp, and high antiquity. Of these families, the
Marquis d'Esgrignon was the acknowledged head. His house
became their cenacle. There His Majesty, Emperor and
King, was never anything but "M. de Bonaparte" ; there "the
King" meant Louis XVIII., then at Mittau; there the De-
partment was still the Province, and the prefecture the in-
tendance.

The Marquis was honored among them for his admirable
behavior, his loyalty as a noble, his undaunted courage; even
as he was respected throughout the town for his misfortunes,
his fortitude, his steadfast adherence to his political convic-
tions. The man so admirable in adversity was invested with
all the majesty of ruined greatness. His chivalrous fair-
mindedness was so well known, that litigants many a time had
referred their disputes to him for arbitration. All gently
bred Imperalists and the authorities themselves showed as
much indulgence for his prejudices as respect for his personal
character; but there was another and a large section of the
new society which was destined to be known after the Res-
toration as the Liberal party; and these, with du Croisier as
their unacknowledged head, laughed at an aristocratic oasis

158 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

which nobody might enter without proof of irreproachable
descent. Their animosity was all the more bitter because
honest country squires and the higher officials, with a good
many worthy folk in the town, were of the opinion that all
the best society thereof was to be found in the Marquis
d'Esgrignon's salon. The prefect himself, the Emperor's
chamberlain, made overtures to the d'Esgrignons, humbly
sending his wife (a Grandlieu) as ambassadress.

Wherefore, those excluded from the miniature provincial
Faubourg Saint-Germain nicknamed the salon "The Collec-
tion of Antiquities," and called the Marquis himself "M.
Carol." The receiver of taxes, for instance, addressed his
applications to "M. Carol (ci-devant des Grignons)," mali-
ciously adopting the obsolete way of spelling.

"For my own part," said Simile Blondet, "if I try to recall
my childhood memories, I remember that the nickname of ' Col-
lection of Antiquities' always made me laugh, in spite of
my respect — my love, I ought to say — for Mile. d'Esgrignon.
The Hotel d'Esgrignon stood at the angle of two of the
busiest thoroughfares in the town, and not five hundred paces
away from the market place. Two of the drawing-room
windows looked upon the street and two upon the square;
the room was like a glass cage, every one who came past could
look through it from side to side. I was only a boy of twelve
at the time, but I thought, even then, that the salon was one
of those rare curiosities which seem, when you come to think
of them afterwards, to lie just on the borderland between
reality and dreams, so that you can scarcely tell to which
side they most belong.

"The room, the ancient Hall of Audience, stood above a
row of cellars with grated air-holes, once the prison cells of
the old court-house, now converted into a kitchen. I do not
know that the magnificent lofty chimney-piece of the Louvre,
with its marvelous carving, seemed more wonderful
to me than the vast open hearth of the salon d'Esgrignon
when I saw it for the first time. It was covered like a

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 159

melon with a network of tracery. Over it stood an equestrian
portrait of Henri III., under whom the ancient duchy of ap-
panage reverted to the crown ; it was a great picture executed
in low relief, and set in a carved and gilded frame. The ceil-
ing spaces between the chestnut cross-beams in the fine old
roof were decorated with scroll-work patterns; there was a
little faded gilding still left along the angles. The walls
were covered with Flemish tapestry, six scenes from the
Judgment of Solomon, framed in golden garlands, with satyrs
and cupids playing among the leaves. The parquet floor
had been laid down by the present Marquis, and Chesnel had
picked up the furniture at sales of the wreckage of old cha-
teaux between 1793 and 1795; so that there were Louis
Quatorze consoles, tables, clock-cases, andirons, candle-sconces
and tapestry-covered chairs, which marvelously completed a
stately room, large out of all proportion to the house.
Luckily, however, there was an equally lofty ante-chamber,
the ancient Salle des Pas Perdus of the presidial, which
communicated likewise with the magistrate's deliberating
chamber, used by the d'Esgrignons as a dining-room.

"Beneath the old paneling, amid the threadbare braveries
of a bygone day, some eight or ten dowagers were drawn up
in state in a quavering line ; some with palsied heads, others
dark and shriveled like mummies ; some erect and stiff, others
bowed and bent, but all of them tricked out in more or less
fantastic costumes as far as possible removed from the fashion
of the day, with be-ribboned caps above their curled and
powdered 'heads/ and old discolored lace. No painter how-
ever earnest, no caricature however wild, ever caught the
haunting fascination of those aged women ; they come back to
me in dreams; their puckered faces shape themselves in
my memory whenever I meet an old woman who puts me in
mind of them by some faint resemblance of dress or feature.
And whether it is that misfortune has initiated me into the
secrets of irremediable and overwhelming disaster; whether
that I have come to understand the whole range of human

feelings, and, best of all, the thoughts of Old Age and Regret ;
vol. 7—33

1G0 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

whatever the reason, nowhere and never again have I seen
among the living or in the faces of the dying the wan look of
certain gray eyes that I remember, nor the dreadful bright-
ness of others that were black.

"Neither Hoffmann nor Maturin, the two weirdest imagina-
tions of our time, ever gave me such a thrill of terror as I
used to feel when I watched the automaton movements of
those bodies sheathed in whalebone. The paint on actors'
faces never caused me a shock ; I could see below it the rouge
in grain, the rouge de naissance, to quote a comrade at least
as malicious as I can be. Years had leveled those women's
faces, and at the same time furrowed them with wrinkles, till
they looked like the heads on wooden nutcrackers carved in
Germany. Peeping in through the window-panes, I gazed at
the battered bodies, and ill-jointed limbs (how they were
fastened together, and, indeed, their whole anatomy was a
mystery I never attempted to explain) ; I saw the lantern jaws,
the protuberant bones, the abnormal development of the hips ;
and the movements of these figures as they came and went
seemed to me no whit less extraordinary than their sepulchral
immobility as they sat round the card-tables.

"The men looked gray and faded like the ancient tapestries
on the wall, in dress they were much more like the men of
the day, but even they were not altogether convincingly alive.
Their white hair, their withered waxen-hued faces, their de-
vastated foreheads and pale eyes, revealed their kinship to
the women, and neutralized any effects of reality borrowed
from their costume.

"The very certainty of finding all these folk seated at or
among the tables every day at the same hours invested them at
length in my eyes with a sort of spectacular interest as it
were; there was something theatrical, something unearthly
about them.

"Whenever, in after times, I have gone through museums
of old furniture in Paris, London, Munich, or Vienna, with
the gray-headed custodian who shows you the splendors of
time past, I have peopled the rooms with figures from the

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 101

Collection of Antiquities. Often, as little schoolboys of
eight or ten we used to propose to go and take a look at
the curiosities in their glass cage, for the fun of the thing.
But as soon as I caught sight of Mile. Armande's sweet face,
I used to tremble; and there was a trace of jealousy in my ad-
miration for the lovely child Victurnien, who belonged, as we
all instinctively felt, to a different and higher order of being
from our own. It struck me as something indescribably
strange that the young fresh creature should be there in that
cemetery awakened before the time. We could not have ex-
plained our thoughts to ourselves, yet we felt that we were
bourgeois and insignificant in the presence of that proud

COUrt."

The disasters of 1813 and 1814, which brought about the
downfall of Napoleon, gave new life to the Collection of Antiq-
uities, and what was more than life, the hope of recovering
their past importance; but the events of 1815, the troubles of
the foreign occupation, and the vacillating policy of the
Government until the fall of M. Decazes, all contributed to
defer the fulfilment of the expectations of the personages so
vividly described by Blondet. This story, therefore, only be-
gins to shape itself in 1822.

In 1822 the Marquis d'Esgrignon's fortunes had not im-
proved in spite of the changes worked by the Eestoration in
the condition of emigres. Of all nobles hardly hit by Revolu-
tionary legislation, his case was the hardest. Like other
great families, the d'Esgrignons before 1789 derived the
greater part of their income from their rights as lords of the
manor in the shape of dues paid by those who held of them ;
and, naturally, the old seigneurs had reduced the size of the
holdings in order to swell the amounts paid in quit-rents and
heriots. Families in this position were hopelessly ruined.
They were not affected by the ordinance by which Louis
XVIII. put the Emigres into possession of such of their lands
as had not been sold; and at a later date it was impossible
that the law of indemnity should indemnify them. Their sup-

162 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

pressed rights, as everybody knows, were revived in the shape
of a land tax known by the very name of domaines, but the
money went into the coffers of the State.

The Marquis by his position belonged to that small section
of the Royalist party which would hear of no kind of com-
promise with those whom they styled, not Revolutionaries, but
revolted subjects, or, in more parliamentary language, they
had no dealings with Liberals or Constitutionnels. Such
Royalists, nicknamed Ultras by the opposition, took for
leaders and heroes those courageous orators of the Right, who
from the very beginning attempted, with M. de Polignac, to
protest against the charter granted by Louis XVIII. This
they regarded as an ill-advised edict extorted from the Crown
by the necessity of the moment, only to be annulled later on.
And, therefore, so far from co-operating with the King to
bring about a new condition of things, the Marquis d'Esgri-
gnon stood aloof, an upholder of the straitest sect of the
Right in politics, until such time as his vast fortune should
be restored to him. Nor did he so much as admit the thought
of the indemnity which filled the minds of the Villele minis-
try, and formed a part of a design of strengthening the
Crown by putting an end to those fatal distinctions of owner-
ship which still lingered on in spite of legislation.

The miracles of the Restoration of 1814, the still greater
miracle of Napoleon's return in 1815, the portents of a
second flight of the Bourbons, and a second reinstatement
(that almost fabulous phase of contemporary history), all
these things took the Marquis by surprise at the age of sixty-
seven. At that time of life, the most high-spirited men of
their age were not so much vanquished as worn
out in the struggle with the Revolution; their activity,
in their remote provincial retreats, had turned into a
passionately held and immovable conviction; and al-
most all of them were shut in by the enervating, easy round
of daily life in the country. Could worse luck befall a
political party than this — to be represented by old men at a
time when its ideas are already stigmatized as old-fashioned ?

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 163

When the legitimate sovereign appeared to be firmly seated
on the throne again in 1818, the Marquis asked himself what
a man of seventy should do at court; and what duties, what
office he could discharge there ? The noble and high-minded
d'Esgrignon was fain to be content with the triumph of the
Monarchy and Eeligion, while he waited for the results of
that unhoped-for, indecisive victory, which proved to be sim-
ply an armistice. He continued as before, lord-paramount
of his salon, so felicitously named the Collection of
Antiquities.

But when the victors of 1793 became the vanquished in
their turn, the nickname given at first in jest began to be used
in bitter earnest. The town was no more free than other
country towns from the hatreds and jealousies bred of party
spirit. Du Croisier, contrary to all expectation, married the
rich old maid who had refused him at first; carrying her off
from his rival, the darling of the aristocratic quarter, a cer-
tain Chevalier whose illustrious name will be sufficiently hid-
den by suppressing it altogether, in accordance with the
usage formerly adopted in the place itself, where he was
known by his title only. He was "the Chevalier" in the
town, as the Comte d'Artois was "Monsieur" at court. Now,
not only had that marriage produced a war after the pro-
vincial manner, in which all weapons are fair; it had hastened
the separation of the great and little noblesse, of the aristo-
cratic and bourgeois social elements, which had been united
for a little space by the heavy weight of Napoleonic rule.
After the pressure was removed, there followed that sudden
revival of class divisions which did so much harm to the
country.

The most national of all sentiments in France is vanity.
The wounded vanity of the many induced a thirst for
Equality ; though, as the most ardent innovator will some day
discover, Equality is an impossibility. The Royalists pricked
the Liberals in the most sensitive spots, and this happened
especially in the provinces, where either party accused the
other of unspeakable atrocities. In those days the blackest

1G4 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

deeds were done in politics, to secure public opinion on one
side or another, to catch the votes of that public of fools
which holds up hands for those that are clever enough to
serve out weapons to them. Individuals are identified with
their political opinions, and opponents in public life forth-
with become private enemies. It is very difficult in a
country town to avoid a man-to-man conflict of this kind
over interests or questions which in Paris appear in a more
general and theoretical form, with the result that political
combatants also rise to a higher level; M. Laffitte, for ex-
ample, or M. Casimir-Perier can respect M. de Villele or M.
de Peyronnet as a man. M. Laffitte, who drew the fire on the
Ministry, would have given them an asylum in his house if
they had fled thither on the 29th of July 1830. Benjamin
Constant sent a copy of his work on Religion to the Vicomte
de Chateaubriand, with a flattering letter acknowledg-
ing benefits received from the former Minister. At Paris
men are systems, whereas in the provinces systems are iden-
tified with men; men, moreover, with restless passions, who
must always confront one another, always spy upon each other
in private life, and pull their opponents' speeches to pieces,
and live generally like two duelists on the watch for a chance
to thrust six inches of steel between an antagonist's ribs.
Each must do his best to get under his enemy's guard, and a
political hatred becomes as all-absorbing as a duel to the death.
Epigram and slander are used against individuals to
bring the party into discredit.

In such warfare as this, waged ceremoniously and without
rancor on the side of the Antiquities, while du Croisier's
faction went so far as to use the poisoned weapons of savages
— in this warfare the advantages of wit and delicate irony lay
on the side of the nobles. But it should never be forgotten
that the wounds made by the tongue and the eyes, by gibe or
slight, are the last of all to heal. When the Chevalier turned
his back on mixed society and entrenched himself on the
Mons Sacer of the aristocracy, his witticisms thenceforward
were directed at du Croisier's salon ; he stirred up the fires of

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 1G5

war, not knowing how far the spirit of revenge was to urge the
rival faction. None but purists and loyal gentlemen and wo-
men sure one of another entered the Hotel d'Esgrignon;
they committed no indiscretions of any kind; they had their
ideas, true or false, good or bad, noble or trivial, but there was
nothing to laugh at in all this. If the Liberals meant to
make the nobles ridiculous, they were obliged to fasten on the
political actions of their opponents; while the intermediate
party, composed of officials and others who paid court to the
higher powers, kept the nobles informed of all that was done
and said in the Liberal camp, and much of it was abundantly
laughable. Du Croisier's adherents smarted under a sense of
inferiority, which increased their thirst for revenge.

In 1822, du Croisier put himself at the head of the manu-
facturing interest of the province, as the Marquis d'Esgri-
gnon headed the noblesse. Each represented his party. But
du Croisier, instead of giving himself out frankly for a man
of the extreme Left, ostensibly adopted the opinions
formulated at a later day by the 221 deputies.

By taking up this position, he could keep in touch with
the magistrates and local officials and the capitalists of the
department. Du Croisier's salon, a power at least equal to
the salon d'Esgrignon, larger numerically, as well as
younger and more energetic, made itself felt all over the
countryside ; the Collection of Antiquities, on the other hand,
remained inert, a passive appendage, as it were, of a central
authority which was often embarrassed by its own partisans;
for not merely did they encourage the Government in a mis-
taken policy, but some of its most fatal blunders were made in
consequence of the pressure brought to bear upon it by the
Conservative party.

The Liberals, so far, had never contrived to carry their can-
didate. The department declined to obey their command,
knowing that du Croisier, if elected, would take his place on
the Left Centre benches, and as far as possible to the Left.
Du Croisier was in correspondence with the Brothers Keller,
the bankers, the oldest of whom shone conspicuous among

1G0 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"the nineteen deputies of the Left," that phalanx made
famous by the efforts of the entire Liberal press. This same
M. Keller, moreover, was related by marriage to the Comte
de Gondreville, a Constitutional peer who remained in favor
with Louis XVIII. For these reasons, the Constitutional Op-
position (as distinct from the Liberal party) was always pre-
pared to vote at the last moment, not for the candidate whom
they professed to support, but for du Croisier, if that worthy
could succeed in gaining a sufficient number of Royalist
votes; but at every election du Croisier was regularly thrown
out by the Eoyalists. The leaders of that party, taking their
tone from the Marquis d'Esgrignon, had pretty thoroughly
fathomed and gauged their man; and with each defeat, du
Croisier and his party waxed more bitter. Nothing so effect-
ually stirs up strife as the failure of some snare set with
elaborate pains.

In 1822 there seemed to be a lull in hostilities which had
been kept up with great spirit during the first four years of
the Restoration. The salon du Croisier and the salon
d'Esgrignon, having measured their strength and weakness,
were in all probability waiting for opportunity, that Provi-
dence of party strife. Ordinary persons were content with
the surface quiet which deceived the Government; but those
who knew du Croisier better, were well aware that the passion
of revenge in him, as in all men whose whole life consists in
mental activity, is implacable, especially when political ambi-
tions are involved. About this time du Croisier, who used
to turn white and red at the bare mention of d'Esgrignon
or the Chevalier, and shuddered at the name of the Collection
of Antiquities, chose to wear the impassive countenance of
a savage. He smiled upon his enemies, hating them but the
more deeply, watching them the more narrowly from hour to
hour. One of his own party, who seconded him in these cal-
culations of cold wrath, was the President of the Tribunal,
M. du Ronceret, a little country squire, who had vainly en-
deavored to gain admittance among the Antiquities.

The d'Esgrignons' little fortune, carefully administered by

the jealousies op a country town 167

Maitre Chesnel, was barely sufficient for the worthy Marquis'
needs; for though he lived without the slightest ostentation,
he also lived like a noble. The governor found by his Lord-
ship the Bishop for the hope of the house, the young Comte
Victurnien d'Esgrignon, was an elderly Oratorian who must
be paid a certain salary, although he lived with the family.
The wages of a cook, a waiting-woman for Mile. Armande, an
old valet for M. le Marquis, and a couple of other servants,
together with the daily expenses of the household, and the
cost of an education for which nothing was spared, absorbed
the whole family income, in spite of Mile. Armande's
economies, in spite of ChesnePs careful management, and the
servants' affection. As yet, Chesnel had not been able to set
about repairs at the ruined castle; he was waiting till the
leases fell in to raise the rent of the farms, for rents had
been rising lately, partly on account of improved methods
of agriculture, partly by the fall in the value of money, of
which the landlord would get the benefit at the expiration of
leases granted in 1809.

The Marquis himself knew nothing of the details of the
management of the house or of his property. He would
have been thunderstruck if he had been told of the excessive
precautions needed "to make both ends of the year meet in
December," to use the housewife's s^ing, and he was so near
the end of his life, that every one shrank from opening his
eyes. The Marquis and his adherents believed that a House,
to which no one at Court or in the Government gave a thought,
a House that was never heard of beyond the gates of the
town, save here and there in the same department, was about
to revive its ancient greatness, to shine forth in all its glory.
The d'Esgrignons' line should appear with renewed lustre in
the person of Victurnien, just as the despoiled nobles came
into their own again, and the handsome heir to a great estate
would be in a position to go to Court, enter the King's ser-
vice, and marry (as other d'Esgrignons had done before him)
a Navarreins, a Cadignan, a d'Uxelles, a Beauseant, a
Blamont-Ohauv*y ; a wife, in short, who should unite all

108 THE JEALOUSIES OE A COUNTRY TOWN

the distinctions of birth and beauty, wit and wealth, and
character.

The intimates who came to play their game of cards of
an evening — the Troisvilles (pronounced Treville), the La
Roche-Guyons, the Casterans (pronounced Cateran), and the
Due de Verneuil — had all so long been accustomed to look
up to the Marquis as a person of immense consequence, that
they encouraged him in such notions as these. They were
perfectly sincere in their belief; and indeed, it would have
been well founded if they could have wiped out the history of
the last forty years. But the most honorable and undoubted
sanctions of right, such as Louis XVIII. had tried to
set on record when he dated the Charter from the one-and-
twentieth year of his reign, only exist when ratified by the
general consent. The d'Esgrignons not only lacked the very
rudiments of the language of latter-day politics, to wit,
money, the great modern relief, or sufficient rehabilitation
of nobility ; but', in their case, too, "historical continuity" was
lacking, and that is a kind of renown which tells quite as
much at Court as on the battlefield, in diplomatic circles as
in Parliament, with a book, or in connection with an ad-
venture; it is, as it were, a sacred ampulla poured upon the
heads of each successive generation. Whereas a noble family,
inactive and forgotten, is very much in the position of a hard-
featured, poverty-stricken, simple-minded, and virtuous maid,
these qualifications being the four cardinal points of mis-
fortune. The marriage of a daughter of the Troisvilles with
General Montcornet, so far from opening the eyes of the j
Antiquities, very nearly brought about a rupture between
the Troisvilles and the salon d'Esgrignon, the latter declaring j
that the Troisvilles were mixing themselves up with all sorts •
of people.

There was one, and one only, among all these folk who did
not share their illusions. And that one, needless to say, was I
Chesnel the notary. Although his devotion, sufficiently |
proved already, was simply unbounded for the great house j
now reduced to three persons ; although he accepted all their j

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 169

ideas, and thought them nothing less than right, he had too
much common sense, he was too good a man of business to
more than half the families in the department, to miss the
significance of the great changes that were taking place in
people's minds, or to be blind to the different conditions
brought about by industrial development and modern man-
ners. He had watched the Eevolution pass through the
violent phase of 1793, when men, women, and children wore
arms, and heads fell on the scaffold, and victories were won
in pitched battles with Europe; and now he saw the same
forces quietly at work in men's minds, in the shape of ideas
which sanctioned the issues. The soil had been cleared, the
seed sown, and now came the harvest. To his thinking, the
Eevolution had formed the mind of the younger generation;
he touched the hard facts, and knew that although there were
countless unhealed wounds, what had been done was done
past recall. The death of a king on the scaffold, the pro-
tracted agony of a queen, the division of the nobles' lands, in
his eyes were so many binding contracts; and where so many
vested interests were involved, it was not likely that those
concerned would allow them to be attacked. Chesnel saw
clearly. His fanatical attachment to the d'Esgrignons was
whole-hearted, but it was not blind, and it was all the fairer for
this. The young monk's faith that sees heaven laid open and
beholds the angels, is something far below the power of the
old monk who points them out to him. The ex-steward was
like the old monk; he would have given his life to defend a
worm-eaten shrine.

He tried to explain the "innovations" to his old master,
using a thousand tactful precautions; sometimes speaking
jestingly, sometimes affecting surprise or sorrow over this or
that ; but he always met the same prophetic smile on the Mar-
quis' lips, the same fixed conviction in the Marquis' mind,
that these follies would go by like others. Events con-
tributed in a way which has escaped attention to assist such
noble champions of forlorn hope to cling to their superstitions.
What could Chesnel do when the old Marquis said, with a,

170 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

Jordly gesture, "God swept away Bonaparte with his armies,
his new great vassals, his crowned kings, and his vast con-
ceptions ! God will deliver us from the rest." And Chesnel
hung his head sadly, and did not dare to answer, "It cannot
be God's will to sweep away France." Yet both of them were
grand figures; the one, standing out against the torrent of
facts like an ancient block of lichen-covered granite, still up-
right in the depths of an Alpine gorge; the other, watching
the course of the flood to turn it to account. Then the
good gray-headed notary would groan over the irreparable
havoc which the superstitions were sure to work in the mind,
the habits, and ideas of the Comte Victurnien d'Esgrignon.

Idolized by his father, idolized by his aunt, the young heir
was a spoilt child in every sense of the word ; but still a spoilt
child who justified paternal and maternal illusions.
Maternal, be it said, for Victurnien's aunt was truly a mother
to him ; and yet, however careful and tender she may be that
never bore a child, there is a something lacking in her mother-
hood. A mother's second sight cannot be acquired. An
aunt, bound to her nursling by ties of such a pure affection as
united Mile. Armande to Victurnien, may love as much as a
mother might; may be as careful, as kind, as tender, as in-
dulgent, but she lacks the mother's instinctive knowledge
when and how to be severe ; she has no sudden warnings, none
of the uneasy presentiments of the mother's heart; for a
mother, bound to her child from the beginnings of life by all
the fibres of her being, still is conscious of the communica-
tion, still vibrates with the shock of every trouble, and thrills
with every joy in the child's life as if it were her own. If
Nature has made of woman, physically speaking, a neutral |
ground, it has not been forbidden to her, under certain condi- '<
tions, to identify herself completely with her offspring. When I
she has not merely given life, but given of her whole life, you j
behold that wonderful, unexplained, and inexplicable thing —
the love of a woman for one of her children above the others. |
The outcome of this story is one more proof of a proven truth j
mother's place cannot be filled. A mother foresees '

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY 1 OWN 171

danger long before a Mile. Armande can admit the possibility
of it, even if the mischief is done. The one prevents the
evil, the other remedies it. And besides, in the maiden's
motherhood there is an element of blind adoration, she can-
not bring herself to scold a beautiful boy.

A practical knowledge of life, and the experience of
business, had taught the old notary a habit of distrustful
clear-sighted observation something akin to the mother's in-
stinct. But Chesnel counted for so little in the house (es-
pecially since he had fallen into something like disgrace over
that unlucky project of a marriage between a d'Esgrignon
and a du Croisier), that he had made up his mind to adhere
blindly in future to the family doctrines. He was a common
soldier, faithful to his post, and ready to give his life ; it was
never likely that they would take his advice, even in the
height of the storm; unless chance should bring him, like
the King's bedesman in The Antiquary, to the edge of the
sea, when the old baronet and his daughter were caught by the
high tide.

Du Croisier caught a glimpse of his revenge in the anom-
alous education given to the lad. He hoped, to quote the ex-
pressive words of the author quoted above, "to drown the lamb
in its mother's milk." This was the hope which had pro-
duced his taciturn resignation and brought that savage smile
on his lips.

The young Comte Victurnien was taught to believe in his
own supremacy as soon as an idea could enter his head. All
the great nobles of the realm were his peers, his one superior
was the King, and the rest of mankind were his inferiors,
people with whom he had nothing in common, towards whom
he had no duties. They were defeated and conquered ene-
mies, whom he need not take into account for a moment;
their opinions could not affect a noble, and they all owed him
respect. Unluckily, with the rigorous logic of youth, which
leads children and young people to proceed to extremes
whether good or bad, Victurnien pushed these conclusions to
their utmost consequences. His own external advantages,

172 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

moreover, confirmed him in his beliefs. He had been extra-
ordinarily beautiful as a child; he became as accomplished a
young man as any father could wish.

He was of average height, but well proportioned, slender,
and almost delicate-looking, but muscular. He had the
brilliant blue eyes of the d'Esgrignons, the finely-moulded
aquiline nose, the perfect oval of the face, the auburn hair,
the white skin, and the graceful gait of his family; he had
their delicate extremities, their long taper fingers with the
inward curve, and that peculiar distinction of shapeliness of
the wrist and instep, that supple felicity of line, which is as
sure a sign of race in men as in horses. Adroit and alert in
all bodily exercises, and an excellent shot, he handled arms
like a St. George, he was a paladin on horseback. In short,
he gratified the pride which parents take in their children's
appearance; a pride founded, for that matter, on a just idea
of the enormous influence exercised by physical beauty. Per-
sonal beauty has this in common with noble birth.: it cannot be
acquired afterwards ; it is everywhere recognized, and often is
more valued than either brains or money; beauty has only
to appear and triumph ; nobody asks more of beauty than that
it should simply exist.

Fate had endowed Victurnien, over and above the privi-
leges of good looks and noble birth, with a high spirit, a won-
derful aptitude of comprehension, and a good memory. His
education, therefore, had been complete. He knew a good
deal more than is usually known by young provincial nobles,
who develop into highly-distinguished sportsmen, owners of
land, and consumers of tobacco; and are apt to treat art,
sciences, letters, poetry, or anything offensively above their in-
tellects, cavalierly enough. Such gifts of nature and educa-
tion surely would one day realize the Marquis d'Esgrignon's
ambitions; he already saw his son a Marshal of France if
Victurnien's tastes were for the army; an ambassador if
diplomacy held any attractions for him ; a cabinet minister if
that career seemed good in his eyes; every place in the state
belonged to Victurnien, And, most gratifying thought of all

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 173

for a father, the young Count would have made his way in the
world by his own merits even if he had not been a d'Es-
grignon.

All through his happy childhood and golden youth, Vic-
turnien had never met with opposition to his wishes. He
had been the king of the house; no one curbed the little
prince's will; and naturally he grew up insolent and au-
dacious, selfish as a prince, self-willed as the most high-spir-
ited cardinal of the Middle Ages, — defects of character which
any one might guess from his qualities, essentially those of
the noble.

The Chevalier was a man of the good old times when the
Gray Musketeers were the terror of the Paris theatres, when
they horsewhipped the watch and drubbed servers of writs,
and played a host of page's pranks, at which Majesty was wont
to smile so long as they were amusing. This charming de-
ceiver and hero of the ruclles had no small share in bringing
about the disasters which afterwards befell. The amiable old
gentleman, with nobody to understand him, was not a little
pleased to find a budding Faublas, who looked the part to
admiration, and put him in mind of his own young days. So,
making no allowance for the difference of the times, he sowed
the maxims of a roue of the Encyclopaedic period broadcast in
the boy's mind. He told wicked anecdotes of the reign of His
Majesty Louis XV. ; he glorified the manners and customs of
the year 1750 ; he told of the orgies in petites maisons, the fol-
lies of courtesans, the capital tricks played on creditors, the
manners, in short, which furnished forth Dancourt's come-
dies and Beaumarchais' epigrams. And unfortunately, 'the
corruption lurking beneath the utmost polish tricked itself
out in Voltairean wit. If the Chevalier went rather too far at
times, he always added as a corrective that a man must always
behave himself like a gentleman.

Of all this discourse, Victurnien comprehended just so
much as flattered his passions. From the first he saw his old
father laughing with the Chevalier. The two elderly men
considered that the pride of a d'Esgrignon was a sufficient

174 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

safeguard against anything unbefitting ; as for a dishonorable
action, no one in the house imagined that a d'Esgrignon could
be guilty of it. Honor, the great principle of Monarchy, was
planted firm like a beacon in the hearts of the family; it
lighted up the least action, it kindled the least thought of a
d'Esgrignon. "A d'Esgrignon ought not to permit himself
to do such and such a thing; he bears a name which pledges
him to make the future worthy of the past" — a noble teaching
which should have been sufficient in itself to keep alive the
tradition of noblesse — had been, as it were, the burden of Vic-
tumien's cradle song. He heard them from the old Marquis,
from Mile. Armande, from Chesnel, from the intimates of
the house. And so it came to pass that good and evil met,
and in equal forces, in the boy's soul.

At the age of eighteen, Yicturnien went into society. He
noticed some slight discrepancies between the outer world of
the town and the inner world of the Hotel d'Esgrignon, but
he in no wise tried to seek the causes of them. And, indeed,
the causes were to be found in Paris. He had yet to learn
that the men who spoke their minds out so boldly in evening
talk with his father, were extremely careful of what they said
in the presence of the hostile persons with whom their inter-
ests compelled them to mingle. His own father had won the
right of freedom of speech. Nobody dreamed of contradicting
an old man of seventy, and besides, every one was willing to
overlook fidelity to the old order of things in a man who had
been violently despoiled.

Victurnien was deceived by appearances, and his behavior
set up the backs of the townspeople. In his impetuous way
he tried to carry matters with too high a hand over some diffi-
culties in the way of sport, which ended in formidable law-
suits, hushed up by Chesnel for money paid down. Nobody
dared to tell the Marquis of these things. You may judge of
his astonishment if he had heard that his son had been prose-
cuted for shooting over his lands, his domains, his covers,
under the reign of a son of St. Louis ! People were too much
afraid of the possible consequences to tell him about such
trifles, Chesnel said.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 175

The young Count indulged in other escapades in the town.
These the Chevalier regarded as "amourettes" but they cost
Chesnel something considerable in portions for forsaken dam-
sels seduced under imprudent promises of marriage : yet other
cases there were which came under an article of the Code as to
the abduction of minors; and but for ChesnePs timely inter-
vention, the- new law would have been allowed to take its
brutal course, and it is hard to say where the Count might
have ended. Victurnien grew the bolder for these victories
over bourgeois justice. He was so accustomed to be pulled out
of scrapes, that he never thought twice before any prank.
Courts of law, in his opinion, were bugbears to frighten people
who had no hold on him. Things which he would have
blamed in common people were for him only pardonable
amusements. His disposition to treat the new laws cavalierly
while obeying the maxims of a Code for aristocrats, his be-
havior and character, were all pondered, analyzed, and tested
by a few adroit persons in du Croisier's interests. These folk
supported each other in the effort to make the people believe
that Liberal slanders were revelations, and that the Minis-
terial policy at bottom meant a return to the old order of
things.

What a bit of luck to find something by way of proof of
their assertions ! President du Ronceret, and the public pros-
ecutor likewise, lent themselves admirably, so far as was com-
patible with their duty as magistrates, to the design of letting
off the offender as easily as possible ; indeed, they went deliber-
ately out of their way to do this, well pleased to raise a Liberal
clamor against their overlarge concessions. And so, while
seeming to serve the interests of the d'Esgrignons, they stirred
up ill feeling against them. The treacherous du Ronceret had
it in his mind to pose as incorruptible at the right moment
over some serious charge, with public opinion to back him up.
The young Count's worst tendencies, moreover, were insidi-
ously encouraged by two or three young men who followed in
his train, paid court to him, won his favor, and flattered and
obeyed him, with a view to confirming his belief in a noble's

vol. 7—34

176 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

supremacy ; and all this at a time when a noble's one chance
of preserving his power lay in using it with the utmost discre-
tion for half a century to come.

Du Croisier hoped to reduce the d'Esgrignons to the last
extremity of poverty ; he hoped to see their castle demolished,
and their lands sold piecemeal by auction, through the follies
which this harebrained boy was pretty certain to commit.
This was as far as he went ; he did not think, with President
du Eonceret, that Victurnien was likely to give justice another
kind of hold upon him. Both men found an ally for their
schemes of revenge in Victurnien's overweening vanity and
love of pleasure. President du Eonceret's son, a lad of sev-
enteen, was admirably fitted for the part of instigator. He
was one of the Count's companions, a new kind of spy in du
Croisier's pay ; du Croisier taught him his lesson, set him to
track down the noble and beautiful boy through his better
qualities, and sardonically prompted him to encourage his
victim in his worst faults. Fabien du Eonceret was a sophis-
ticated youth, to whom such a mystification was attractive ; he
had precisely the keen brain and envious nature which finds
in such a pursuit as this the absorbing amusement which a
man of an ingenious turn lacks in the provinces.

In three years, between the ages of eighteen and one-and-
twenty, Victurnien cost poor Chesnel nearly eighty thousand
francs! And this without the knowledge of Mile. Ar-
mando or the Marquis. More than half of the money had
been spent in buying off lawsuits ; the lad's extravagance had
squandered the rest. Of the Marquis' income of ten thousand
livres, five thousand were necessary for the housekeeping;
two thousand more represented Mile. Armando's allowance
(parsimonious though she was) and the Marquis' expenses.
The handsome young heir-presumptive, therefore, had not a
hundred louis to spend. And what sort of figure can a man
make on two thousand livres ? Victurnien's tailor's bills alone
absorbed his whole allowance. He had his linen, his clothes,
gloves, and perfumery from Paris. He wanted a good English
saddle-horse, a tilbury, and a second horse. M. du Croisier

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 177

had a tilbury and a thoroughbred. Was the bourgeoisie to cut
out the noblesse? Then, the young Count must have a man
in the d'Esgrignon livery. He prided himself on setting the
fashion among young men in the town and the department ;
he entered that world of luxuries and fancies which suit youth
and good looks and wit so well. Chesnel paid for it all, not
without using, like ancient parliaments, the right of protest,
albeit he spoke with angelic kindness.

"What a pity it is that so good a man should be so tire-
some !" Victurnien would say to himself every time that the
notary staunched some wound in his purse.

Chesnel had been left a widower, and childless; he had
taken his old master's son to fill the void in his heart. It
was a pleasure to him to watch the lad driving up the High
Street, perched aloft on the box-seat of the tilbury, whip in
hand, and a rose in his button-hole, handsome, well turned
out, envied by every one.

Pressing need would bring Victurnien with uneasy eyes and
coaxing manner, but steady voice, to the modest house in the
Rue du Bercail; there had been losses at cards at the Trois-
villes, or the Due de Verneuil's, or the prefecture, or the
receiver-general's, and the Count had come to his providence,
the notary. He had only to show himself to carry the day.

"Well, what is it, M. le Comte? What has happened ?" the
old man would ask, with a tremor in his voice.

On great occasions Victurnien would sit down, assume a
melancholy, pensive expression, and submit with little co-
quetries of voice and gesture to be questioned. Then when
he had thoroughly roused the old man's fears (for Chesnel
was beginning to fear how such a course of extravagance
would end), he would own up to a peccadillo which a bill for a
thousand francs would absolve. Chesnel possessed a private
income of some twelve thousand livres, but the fund was not
inexhaustible. The eighty thousand francs thus squandered
represented his savings, accumulated for the day when the
Marquis should send his son to Paris, or open negotiations for
a wealthy marriage.

178 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Chesnel was clear-sighted so long as Yicturnien was not
there before him. One by one he lost the illusions which the
Marquis and his sister still fondly cherished. He saw that the
young fellow could not be depended upon in the least, and
wished to see him married to some modest, sensible girl of
good birth, wondering within himself how a young man could
mean so well and do so ill, for he made promises one day only
to break them all on the next.

But there is never any good to be expected of young men
who confess their sins and repent, and straightway fall into
them again. A man of strong character only confesses his
faults to himself, and punishes himself for them; as for the
weak, they drop back into the old ruts when they find that
the bank is too steep to climb. The springs of pride which lie
in a great man's secret soul had been slackened in Victurnien.
With such guardians as he had, such company as he kept>
such a life as he had led, he had suddenly become an enervated
voluptuary at that turning-point in his life when a man most
stands in need of the harsh discipline of misfortune and
poverty to bring out the strength that is in him, the pinch of
adversity which formed a Prince Eugene, a Frederick II., a
Napoleon. Chesnel saw that Victurnien possessed that un-
controllable appetite for enjoyments which should be the pre-
rogative of men endowed with giant powers ; the men who feel
the need of counterbalancing their gigantic labors by pleasures
which bring one-sided mortals to the pit.

At times the good man stood aghast; then, again, some
profound salty, some sign of the lad's remarkable range of in-
tellect, would reassure him. He would say, as the Marquis
said at the rumor of some escapade, "Boys will be boys."
Chesnel had spoken to the Chevalier, lamenting the young
lord's propensity for getting into debt; but the Chevalier
manipulated his pinch of snuff, and listened with a smile of
amusement.

"My dear Chesnel, just explain to me what a national debt
is," he answered. "If France has debts, egad! why should
not Victurnien have debts? At this time and at all times

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 179

princes have debts, every gentleman has debts. Perhaps you
would rather that Victurnien should bring you his savings ? —
Do you know what our great Richelieu (not the Cardinal, a
pitiful fellow that put nobles to death, but the Marechal), do
you know what he did once when his grandson the Prince de
Chinon, the last of the line, let him see that he had not spent
his pocket-money at the University?"

"No, M. le Chevalier."

"Oh, well; he flung the purse out of the window to a
sweeper in the courtyard, and said to his grandson, 'Then
they do not teach you to be a prince here ?' "

Chesnel bent his head and made no answer. But that night,
as he lay awake, he thought that such doctrines as these were
fatal in times when there was one law for everybody, and fore-
saw the first beginnings of the ruin of the d'Esgrignons.

But for these explanations which depict one side of pro-
vincial life in the time of the Empire and the Restoration, it
would not be easy to understand the opening scene of this
history, an incident which took place in the great salon one
evening towards the end of October 1822. The card-tables
were forsaken, the Collection of Antiquities — elderly nobles,
elderly countesses, young marquises, and simple baronesses —
had settled their losses and winnings. The master of the house
was pacing up and down the room, while Mile. Armande was
putting out the candles on the card-tables. He was not tak-
ing exercise alone, the Chevalier was with him, and the two
wrecks of the eighteenth century were talking of Victurnien.
The Chevalier had undertaken to broach the subject with
the Marquis.

"Yes, Marquis," he was saying, "your son is wasting his
time and his youth; you ought to send him to court."

"I have always thought," said the Marquis, "that if my
great age prevents me from going to court — where, between
ourselves, I do not know what I should do among all these
new people whom His Majesty receives, and all that is going
on there — that if I could not go myself, I could at least send

180 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

my son to present our homage to His Majesty. The King
surely would do something for the Count — give him a com-
pany, for instance, or a place in the Household, a chance, in
short, for the boy to win his spurs. My uncle the Archbishop
suffered a cruel martyrdom ; I have fought for the cause with-
out deserting the camp with those who thought it their duty
to follow the Princes. I held that while the King was in
France, his nobles should rally round him. — Ah ! well, no one
gives us a thought; a Henri IV. would have written before
now to the d'Esgrignons, 'Come to me, my friends; we have
won the day !' — After all, we are something better than the
Troisvilles, yet here are two Troisvilles made peers of France ;
and another, I hear, represents the nobles in the Chamber."
(He took the upper electoral colleges for assemblies of his
own order.) "Really, they think no more of us than if we did
not exist. I was waiting for the Princes to make their journey
through this part of the world ; but as the Princes do not come
to us, we must go to the Princes."

"I am enchanted to learn that you think of introducing our
dear Victurnien into society," the Chevalier put in adroitly.
"He ought not to bury his talents in a hole like this town.
The best fortune that he can look for here is to come across
some Norman girl" (mimicking the accent), "country-bred,
stupid, and rich. What could he make of her? — his wife?
Oh! good Lord!"

"I sincerely hope that he will defer his marriage until he
has obtained some great office or appointment under the
Crown," returned the gray-haired Marquis. "Still, there are
serious difficulties in the way."

And these were the only difficulties which the Marquis saw
at the outset of his son's career.

"My son, the Comte d'Esgrignon, cannot make his appear-
ance at court like a tatterdemalion," he continued after a
pause, marked by a sigh ; "he must be equipped. Alas ! for
these two hundred years we have had no retainers. Ah!
Chevalier, this demolition from top to bottom always brings
me back to the first hammer stroke delivered by M. de Mira-

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 181

beau. The one thing needful nowadays is money ; that is all
that the Eevolution has done that I can see. The King does
not ask you whether you are a descendant of the Valois or a
conquerer of Gaul ; he asks whether you pay a thousand francs
in tailles which nobles never used to pay. So I cannot well
send the Count to court without a matter of twenty thousand
crowns "

"Yes," assented the Chevalier, "with that trifling sum he
could cut a brave figure."

"Well," said Mile. Armande, "I have asked Chesnel to come
to-night. Would you believe it, Chevalier, ever since the day
when Chesnel proposed that I should marry that miserable du
Croisier "

"Ah! that was truly unworthy, mademoiselle!" cried the
Chevalier.

"Unpardonable !" said the Marquis.

"Well, since then my brother has never brought himself to
ask anything whatsoever of Chesnel," continued Mile. Ar-
mande.

"Of your old household servant ? Why, Marquis, you would
do Chesnel honor — an honor which he would gratefully re-
member till his latest breath."

"No," said the Marquis, "the thing is beneath one's dignity,
it seems to me."

"There is not much question of dignity; it is a matter of
necessity," said the Chevalier, with the trace of a shrug.

"Never," said the Marquis, riposting with a gesture which
decided the Chevalier to risk a great stroke to open his old
friend's eyes.

"Very well," he said, "since you do not know it, I will tell
you myself that Chesnel has let your son have something al-
ready, something like "

"My son is incapable of accepting anything whatever from
Chesnel," the Marquis broke in, drawing himself up as he
spoke. "He might have come to you to ask you for twenty-
five louis "

"Something like a hundred thousand livres," said the
Chevalier, finishing his sentence.

182 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

"The Comte d'Esgrignon owes a hundred thousand livres
to a Chesnel!" cried the Marquis, with every sign of deep
pain. "Oh ! if he were not an only son, he should set out to-
night for Mexico with a captain's commission. A man may
be in debt to money-lenders, they charge a heavy interest, and
you are quits; that is right enough; but Chesnel! a man to
whom one is attached ! *

"Yes, our adorable Victurnien has run through a hundred
thousand livres, dear Marquis," resumed the Chevalier, flick-
ing a trace of snuff from his waistcoat; "it is not much, I

know. I myself at his age But, after all, let us let old

memories be, Marquis. The Count is living in the provinces ;
all things taken into consideration, it is not so much amiss.
He will not go far; these irregularities are common in men
who do great things afterwards "

"And he is sleeping upstairs, without a word of this to his
father/' exclaimed the Marquis.

"Sleeping innocently as a child who has merely got five or
six little bourgeoises into trouble, and now must have duch-
esses," returned the Chevalier.

"Why, he deserves a lettre de cachet!*'

" 'They' have done away with lettres de cachet" said the
Chevalier. "You know what a hubbub there was when they
tried to institute a law for special cases. We could not keep
the provost's courts, which M. de Bonaparte used to call com-
missions militaires."

"Well, well ; what are we to do if our boys are wild, or turn
out scapegraces ? Is there no locking them up in these days ?"
asked the Marquis.

The Chevalier looked at the heartbroken father and lacked
courage to answer, "We shall be obliged to bring them up
properly."

"And you have never said a word of this to me, Mile. d'Es-
grignon," added the Marquis, turning suddenly round upon
Mile. Armande. He never addressed her as Mile. d'Esgrignon
except when he was vexed ; usually she was called "my sister."

"Why, monsieur, when a young man is full of life and

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 183

spirits, and leads an idle life in a town like this, what else
can you expect?" asked Mile. d'Esgrignon. She could not
understand her brother's anger.

"Debts ! eh ! why, hang it all !" added the Chevalier. "He
plays cards, he has little adventures, he shoots, — all these
things are horribly expensive nowadays."

"Come," said the Marquis, "it is time to send him to the
King. I will spend to-morrow morning in writing to our
kinsmen."

"I have some acquaintance with the Dues de Navarreins, de
Lenoncourt, de Maufrigneuse, and de Chaalieu," said the
Chevalier, though he knew, as he spoke, that he was pretty
thoroughly forgotten.

"My dear Chevalier, there is no need of such formalities to
present a d'Esgrignon at court," the Marquis broke in. — "A
hundred thousand livres," he muttered ; "this Chesnel makes
very free. This is what comes of these accursed troubles.
M. Chesnel protects my son. And now T must ask him.
. . . No, sister, you must undertake this business. Chesnel
shall secure himself for the whole amount by a mortgage on
our lands. And just give this harebrained boy a good scold-
ing ; he will end by ruining himself if he goes on like this."

The Chevalier and Mile. d'Esgrignon thought these words
perfectly simple and natural, absurd as they would have
sounded to any other listener. So far from seeing anything
ridiculous in the speech, they were both very much touched
by a look of something like anguish in the old noble's face.
Some dark premonition seemed to weigh upon M. d'Es-
grignon at that moment, some glimmering of an insight into
the changed times. He went to the settee by the fireside and
sat down, forgetting that Chesnel would be there before long;
that Chesnel, of whom he could not bring himself to ask any-
thing.

Just then the Marquis d'Esgrignon looked exactly as any
imagination with a touch of romance could wish. He was
almost bald, but a fringe of silken, white locks, curled at the
tips, covered the back of his head. All the pride of race might

l&l THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

be seen in a noble forehead, such as you may admire in a
Louis XV., a Beaumarchais, a Marechal de Eichelieu; it was
not the square, broad brow of the portraits of the Marechal
de Saxe; nor yet the small hard circle of Voltaire, compact
to overf ulness ; it was graciously rounded and finely moulded,
the temples were ivory tinted and soft ; and mettle and spirit,
unquenched by age, flashed from the brilliant eyes. The
Marquis had the Conde nose and the lovable Bourbon mouth,
from which, as they used to say of the Comte d'Artois, only
witty and urbane words proceed. His cheeks, sloping rather
than foolishly rounded to the chin, were in keeping with his
spare frame, thin legs, and plump hands. The strangulation
cravat at his throat was of the kind which every marquis wears
in all the portraits which adorn eighteenth century literature ;
it is common alike to Saint-Preux and to Lovelace, to the
elegant Montesquieu's heroes and to Diderot's homespun char-
acters (see the first editions of those, writers' works).

The Marquis always wore a white, gold-embroidered, high
waistcoat, with the red ribbon of a commander of the Order of
St. Louis blazing upon his breast; and a blue coat with widej
skirts, and fleurs-de-lys on the flaps, which were turned back —
an odd costume which the King had adopted. But the
Marquis could not bring himself to give up the Frenchman's!
knee-breeches nor yet the white silk stockings or the buckle
at the knees. After six o'clock in the evening he appeared ii
full dress.

He read no newspapers but the Quotidienne and the Gazeti
de France, two journals accused by the Constitutional pre*
of obscurantist views and uncounted "monarchical and r<
ligious" enormities; while the Marquis d'Esgrignon, on the
other hand, found heresies and revolutionary doctrines ii
every issue. No matter to what extremes the organs of thi
or that opinion may go, they will never go quite far enougl
to please the purists on their own side ; even as the portrayei
of this magnificent personage is pretty certain to be accusec|
of exaggeration, whereas he has done his best to soften do^
some of the cruder tones and dim the more startling tints oi
the original.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 185

The Marquis d'Esgrignon rested his elbows on his knees and
leant his head on his hands. During his meditations Mile.
Armande and the Chevalier looked at one another without
uttering the thoughts in their minds. Was he pained by the
discovery that his son's future must depend upon his sometime
land steward ? Was- he doubtful of the reception awaiting
the young Count ? Did he regret that he had made no prepara-
tion for launching his heir into that brilliant world of court ?
Poverty had kept him in the depths of his province; how
should he have appeared at court? He sighed heavily as he
raised his head.

That sigh, in those days, came from the real aristocracy
all over France ; from the loyal provincial noblesse, consigned
to neglect with most of those who had drawn sword and braved
the storm for the cause.

"What have the Princes done for the du Guenics, or the
Fontaines, or the Bauvans, who never submitted?" he mut-
tered to himself. "They fling miserable pensions to the men
who fought most bravely, and give them a royal lieutenancy
in a fortress somewhere on the outskirts of the kingdom."

Evidently the Marquis doubted the reigning dynasty. Mile.
d'Esgrignon was trying to reassure her brother as to the pros-
pects of the journey, when a step outside on the dry narrow
footway gave them notice of Chesnel's coming. In another
moment Chesnel appeared ; Josephin, the Count's gray-haired
valet, admitted the notary without announcing him.

"Chesnel, my boy " (Chesnel was a white-haired man

of sixty-nine, with a square-jawed, venerable countenance;
he wore knee-breeches, ample enough to fill several chapters
of dissertation in the manner of Sterne, ribbed stockings,
shoes with silver clasps, an ecclesiastical-looking coat and a
high waistcoat of scholastic cut.

"Chesnel, my boy, it was very presumptuous of you to
lend money to the Comte d'Esgrignon! If I repaid you at
once and we never saw each other again, it would be no more
than you deserve for giving wings to his vices."

186 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

There was a pause, a silence such as there falls at court
when the King publicly reprimands a courtier. The old
notary looked humble and contrite.

"I am anxious about that boy, Chesnel," continued the
Marquis in a kindly tone; "I should like to send him to Paris
to serve His Majesty. Make arrangements with my sister for
his suitable appearance at court. — And we will settle ac-
counts^ *

The Marquis looked grave as he left the room with a
friendly gesture of farewell to Chesnel.

"I thank M. le Marquis for all his goodness," returned the
old man, who still remained standing.

Mile. Armande rose to go to the door with her brother ; she
had rung the bell, old Josephin was in readiness to light his
master to his room.

"Take a seat, Chesnel," said the lady, as she returned, and
with womanly tact she explained away and softened the
Marquis' harshness. And yet beneath that harshness Chesnel
saw a great affection. The Marquis' attachment for his old
servant was something of the same order as a man's affection
for his dog; he will fight any one who kicks the animal, the
dog is like a part of his existence, a something which, if not
exactly himself, represents him in that which is nearest and
dearest — his sensibilities.

"It is quite time that M. le Comte should be sent away from
the town, mademoiselle," he said sententiously.

"Yes," returned she. "Has he been indulging in some
new escapade ?"

"No, mademoiselle."

"Well, why do you blame him ?"

"I am not blaming him, mademoiselle. No, I am not
blaming him. I am very far from blaming him. I will even
say that I shall never blame him, whatever he may do."

There was a pause. The Chevalier, nothing if not quick
to take in a situation, began to yawn like a sleep-ridden
mortal. Gracefully he made his excuses and went, with as
little mind to sleep as to go and drown himself. The imp

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 181

Curiosity kept the Chevalier wide awake, and with airy
fingers plucked away the cotton wool from his ears.

"Well, Chesnel, is it something new?" Mile. Armande be-
gan anxiously.

"Yes, things that cannot be told to M. le Marquis; he
would drop down in an apoplectic fit."

"Speak out," she said. With her beautiful head leant on
the back of her low chair, and her arms extended listlessly by
her side, she looked as if she were waiting passively for her
deathblow.

"Mademoiselle, M. le Comte, with all his cleverness, is a
plaything in the hands of mean creatures, petty natures on
the lookout for a crushing revenge. They want to ruin us
and bring us low ! There is the President of the Tribunal,
M. du Eonceret ; he has, as you know, a very great notion of
his descent "

"His grandfather was an attorney," interposed Mile. Ar-
mande.

"I know he ./as. And for that reason you have not received
him ; nor does he go to M. de Troisville's, nor to M. le Due de
Verneuil's, nor to the Marquis de Casteran's ; but he is one of
the pillars of du Croisier's salon. Your nephew may rub
shoulders with young M. Fabien du Ronceret without conde-
scending too far, for he must have companions of his own
age. Well and good. That young fellow is at the bottom of
all M. le Comte's follies; he and two or three of the rest of
them belong to the other side, the side of M. le Chevalier's
enemy, who does nothing but breathe threats of vengeance
against you and all the nobles together. They all hope to
ruin you through your nephew. The ringleader of the con-
spiracy is this sycophant of a du Croisier, the pretended Roy-
alist. Du Croisier's wife, poor thing, knows nothing about
it ; you know her, I should have heard of it before this if she
had ears to hear evil. For some time these wild young fellows
were not in the secret, nor was anybody else; but the ring-
leaders let something drop in jest, and then the fools got to
know about it, and after the Count's recent escapades they let
fall some words while they were drunk. And those words were

188 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

carried to me by others who are sorry to see such a fine, hand-
some, noble, charming lad ruining himself with pleasure. So
far people feel sorry for him ; before many days are over they
will — I am afraid to say what "

"They will despise him; say it out, Chesnel!" Mile. Ar-
mande cried piteously.

"Ah ! How can you keep the best people in the town from
finding out faults in their neighbors ? They do not know what
to do with themselves from morning to night. And so M. le
Comte's losses at play are all reckoned up. Thirt}^ thousand
francs have taken flight during these two months, and every-
body wonders where he gets the money. If they mention it
when I am present, I just call them to order. Ah ! but — 'Do
you suppose' (I told them this morning), 'do you suppose that
if the d'Esgrignon family have lost their manorial rights, that
therefore they have been robbed of their hoard of treasure?
The young Count has a right to do as he pleases ; and so long
as he does not owe you a half-penny, you have no right to say
a word.' "

Mile. Armande held out her hand, and the notary kissed it
respectfully.

"Good Chesnel! . . . But, my friend, how shall we
find the money for this journey ? Victurnien must appear as
befits his rank at court."

"Oh ! I have borrowed money on Le Jard, mademoiselle."

"What ? You had nothing left ! Ah, heaven ! what can we
do to reward you ?"

"You can take the hundred thousand francs which I hold
at your disposal. You can understand that the loan was ne-
gotiated in confidence, so that it might not reflect on you ; for
it is known in the town that I am closely connected with the
d'Esgrignon family."

Tears came into Mile. Armande's eyes. Chesnel saw them,
took a fold of the noble woman's dress in his hands, and
kissed it.

"Never mind," he said, "a lad must sow his wild oats. In
great salons in Paris his boyish ideas will take a new turn

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 189

And, really, though our old friends here are the worthiest
folk in the world, and no one could have nobler hearts than
they, they are not amusing. If M. le Comte wants amuse-
ment, he is obliged to look below his rank, and he will end by
getting into low company."

Next day the old traveling coach saw the light, and was sent
to be put in repair. In a solemn interview after breakfast,
the hope of the house was duly informed of his father's inten-
tions regarding him — he was to go to court and ask to serve
His Majesty. He would have time during the journey to
make up his mind about his career. The navy or the army,
the privy council, an embassy, or the Royal Household, — all
were open to a d'Esgrignon, a d'Esgrignon had only to choose.
The King would certainly look favorably upon the d'Es-
grignons, because they had asked nothing of him, and had
sent the youngest representative of their house to receive the
recognition of Majesty.

But young d'Esgrignon, with all his wild pranks, had
guessed instinctively what society in Paris meant, and formed
his own opinions of life. So when they talked of his leaving
the country and the paternal roof, he listened with a grave
countenance to his revered parent's lecture, and refrained
from giving him a good deal of information in reply. As,
for instance, that young men no longer went into the army
or the navy as they used to do ; that if a man had a mind to be
a second lieutenant in a cavalry regiment without passing
through a special training in the Ecoles, he must first serve
in the Pages ; that sons of the greatest houses went exactly like
commoners to Saint-Cyr and the Ecole polytechnique, and
took their chances of being beaten by base blood. If he had
enlightened his relatives on these points, funds might not
have been forthcoming for a stay in Paris ; so he allowed his
father and Aunt Armande to believe that he would be per-
mitted a seat in the King's carriages, that he must support
his dignity at court as the d'Esgrignon of the time, and rub
shoulders with great lords of the realm.

It grieved the Marquis that he could send but one servant

190 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

with his son; but he gave him his own old valet Josephin, a
man who can be trusted to take care of his young master, and
to watch faithfully over his interests. The poor father must
do without Josephin, and hope to replace him with a young
lad.

"Remember that you are a Carol, my boy," he said; "re-
member that you come of an unalloyed descent, and that your
scutcheon bears the motto Cil est nostre; with such arms you
may hold your head high everywhere, and aspire to queens.
Render grace to your father, as I to mine. We owe it to the
honor of our ancestors, kept stainless until now, that we can
look all men in the face, and need bend the knee to none save
a mistress, the King, and God. This is the greatest of your
privileges."

Chesnel, good man, was breakfasting with the family. He
took no part in counsels based on heraldry, nor in the inditing
of letters addressed to divers mighty personages of the day;
but he had spent the night in writing to an old friend of his,
one of the oldest established notaries of Paris. Without this
letter it is not possible to understand Chesnel's real and as-
sumed fatherhood. It almost recalls Daedalus' address to
Icarus; for where, save in old mythology, can you look for
comparisons worthy of this man of antique mould ?

"My dear and estimable Sorbier, — I remember with no
little pleasure that I made my first campaign in our honorable
profession under your father, and that you had a liking for
me, poor little clerk that I was. And now I appeal to old
memories of the days when we worked in the same office, old
pleasant memories for our hearts, to ask you to do me the one
service that I have ever asked of you in the course of our long
lives, crossed as they have been by political catastrophes, to
which, perhaps, I owe it that I have the honor to be your col-
league. And now I ask this service of you, my friend, and
my white hairs will be brought with sorrow to the grave if
you should refuse my entreaty. It is no question of myself or
of mine, Sorbier, for I lost poor Mnie. Chesnel, and I have no

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 191

child of my own. Something more to me than my own family
(if I had had one) is involved — it is the Marquis d'Es-
grignon's only son. I have had the honor to be the Marquis'
land steward ever since I left the office to which his father
sent me at his own expense, with the idea of providing for me.
The house which nurtured me has passed through all the
troubles of the Revolution. I have managed to save some of
their property ; but what is it, after all, in comparison with the
wealth that they have lost? I cannot tell you, Sorbier, how
deeply I am attached to the great house, which has been all
but swallowed up under my eyes by the abyss of time. M. le
Marquis was proscribed, and his lands confiscated, he was
getting on in years, he had no child. Misfortunes upon mis-
fortunes ! Then M. le Marquis married, and his wife died
when the young Count was born, and to-day this noble, dear,
and precious child is all the life of the d'Esgrignon family;
the fate of the house hangs upon him. He has got into debt
here with amusing himself. What else should he do in the
provinces with an allowance of a miserable hundred louis?
Yes, my friend, a hundred louis, the great house has come to
this.

"In this extremity his father thinks it necessary to send
the Count to Paris to ask for the King's favor at court. Paris
is a very dangerous place for a lad; if he is to keep steady
there, he must have the grain of sense which makes notaries of
us. Besides, I should be heartbroken to think of the poor boy
living amid such hardships as we have known. — Do you re-
member the pleasure with which you shared my roll in the
pit of the Theatre-Frangais when we spent a day and a night
there waiting to see The Marriage of Figaro ? Oh, blind that
we were ! — We were happy and poor, but a noble cannot be
happy in poverty. A noble in want — it is a thing against
nature ! Ah ! Sorbier, when one has known the satisfaction
of propping one of the grandest genealogical trees in the king-
dom in its fall, it is so natural to interest oneself in it and to
grow fond of it, and love it and water it and look to see it

blossom. So you will not be surprised at so many precautions
vol. 7—35

192 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

on my part ; you will not wonder when I beg the help of your
lights, so that all may go well with our young man.

"The family has allowed a hundred thousand francs for the
expenses of M. le Comte's journey. There is not a young
man in Paris fit to compare with him, as you will see ! You
will take an interest in him as if he were your only son ; and
lastly, I am quite sure that Madame Sorbier will not hesitate
to second you in the office of guardian. M. le Comte Yic-
turnien's monthly allowance is fixed at two thousand francs,
but give him ten thousand for his preliminary expenses. The
family have provided in this way for a stay of two years, un-
less he takes a journey abroad, in which case we will see
about making other arrangements. Join me in this work,
my old friend, and keep the purse-strings fairly tight. Repre-
sent things to M. le Comte without reproving him ; hold him
in as far as you can, and do not let him anticipate his monthly
allowance without sufficient reason, for he must not be driven
to desperation if honor is involved.

"Keep yourself informed of his movements and doings, of
the company which he keeps, and watch over his connections
with women. M. le Chevalier says that an opera dancer often
costs less than a court lady. Obtain information on that point
and let me know. If you are too busy, perhaps Mme. Sorbier
might know what becomes of the young man, and where he
goes. The idea of playing the part of guardian angel to such
a noble and charming boy might have attractions for her.
God will remember her for accepting the sacred trust. Per-
haps when you see M. le Comte Victurnien, her heart may
tremble at the thought of all the dangers awaiting him in
Paris; he is very young, and very handsome; clever, and at
the same time disposed to trust others. If he forms a connec-
tion with some designing woman, Mme. Sorbier could counsel
him better than you yourself could do. The old man-servant
who is with him can tell you many things; sound Josephin,
I have told him to go to you in delicate matters.

"But why should I say more? We once were clerks to-
gether, and a pair of scamps ; remember our escapades, and be

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 103

a little bit young again, my old friend, in your dealings with
him. The sixty thousand francs will be remitted to you in
the shape of a bill on the Treasury by a gentleman who is
going to Paris," and so forth.

If the old couple to whom this epistle was addressed had
followed out ChesnePs instructions, they would have been
compelled to take three private detectives into their pay. And
yet there was ample wisdom shown in Chesnel's choice of a
depositary. A banker pays money to any one accredited to
him so long as the money lasts; whereas, Victurnien was
obliged, every time that he was in want of money, to make a
personal visit to the notary, who was quite sure to use the right
of remonstrance.

Victurnien heard that he was to be allowed two thousand
francs every month, and thought that he betrayed his joy.
He knew nothing of Paris. He fancied that he could keep
up princely state on such a sum.

Next day he started on his journey. All the benedictions
of the Collection of Antiquities went with him ; he was kissed
by the dowagers; good wishes were heaped on his head; his
old father, his aunt, and Chesnel went with him out of the
town, tears filling the eyes of all the three. The sudden de-
parture supplied material for conversation for several even-
ings ; and what was more, it stirred the rancorous minds of the
salon du Croisier to the depths. The forage-contractor, the
president, and others who had vowed to ruin the d'Esgrignons,
saw their prey escaping out of their hands. They had based
their schemes of revenge on a young man's follies, and now
he was beyond their reach.

The tendency in human nature, which often gives a bigot
a rake for a daughter, and makes a frivolous woman the
mother of a narrow pietist ; that rule of contraries, which, in
all probability, is the "resultant" of the law of similarities,
drew Victurnien to Paris by a desire to which he must sooner
or later have yielded. Brought up as he had been in the old-
fashioned provincial house, among the quiet, gentle faces that

101 TUB JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

smiled upon him, among sober servants attached to the family,
and surroundings tinged with a general color of age, the boy
had only seen friends worthy of respect. All of those about
him, with the exception of the Chevalier, had example of
venerable age, were elderly men and women, sedate of man-
ner, decorous and sententious of speech. He had been petted
by those women in the gray gowns and embroidered mittens
described by Blondet. The antiquated splendors of his father's
house were as little calculated as possible to suggest frivolous
thoughts ; and lastly, he had been educated by a sincerely re-
ligious abbe, possessed of all the charm of an old age, which
has dwelt in two centuries, and brings to the Present its gifts
of the dried roses of experience, the faded flowers of the old
customs of its youth. Everything should have combined to
fashion Victurnien to serious habits ; his whole surroundings
from childhood bade him continue the glory of a historic
name, by taking his life as something noble and great ; and yet
Victurnien listened to dangerous promptings.

For him, his noble birth was a stepping-stone which raised
him above other men. He felt that the idol of Noblesse, be-
fore which they burned incense at home, was hollow; he had
come to be one of the commonest as well as one of the worst
types from a social point of view — a consistent egoist. The
aristocratic cult of the Ego simply taught him to follow his
own fancies; he had been idolized by those who had the care
of him in childhood, and adored by the companions who
shared in his boyish escapades, and so he had formed a habit
of looking and judging everything as it affected his own
pleasure; he took it as a matter of course when good souls
saved him from the consequences of his follies, a piece of mis-
taken kindness which could only lead to his ruin. Yicturnien's
early training, noble and pious though it was, had isolated
him too much. He was out of the current of the life of his
time, for the life of a provincial town is certainly not in the
main current of the age ; Victurnien's true destiny lifted him
above it. He had learned to think of an action, not as
it affected others, nor relatively, but absolutely from his own

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 105

point of view. Like despots, he made the law to suit the cir-
cumstance, a system which works in the lives of prodigal sons
the same confusion which fancy brings into art.

Victurnien was quick-sighted, he saw clearly and without
illusion, but he acted on impulse, and unwisely. An inde-
finable flaw of character, often seen in young men, but im-
possible to explain, led him to will one thing and do another.
In spite of an active mind, which showed itself in unexpected
ways, the senses had but to assert themselves, and the dark-
ened brain seemed to exist no longer. He might have aston-
ished wise men; he was capable of setting fools agape. His
desires, like a sudden squall of bad weather, overclouded all
the clear and lucid spaces of his brain in a moment ; and then,
after the dissipations which he could not resist, he sank, ut-
terly exhausted in body, heart, and mind, into a collapsed
condition bordering upon imbecility. Such a character will
drag a man down into the mire if he is left to himself, or
bring him to the highest heights of political power if he has
some stern friend to keep him in hand. Neither Chesnel, nor
the lad's father, nor Aunt Armande had fathomed the depths
of a nature so nearly akin on many sides to the poetic tem-
perament, yet smitten with a terrible weakness at its core.

By the time the old town lay several miles away, Vic-
turnien felt not the slightest regret ; he thought no more about
the father, who had loved ten generations in his son, nor of
the aunt, and her almost insane devotion. He was looking
forward to Paris with vehement ill-starred longings, in
thought he had lived in that fairyland, it had been the back-
ground of his brightest dreams. He imagined that he would
be first in Paris, as he had been in the town and the depart-
ment where his father's name was potent ; but it was vanity,
not pride, that filled his soul, and in his dreams his pleasures
were to be magnified by all the greatness of Paris. The dis-
tance was soon crossed. The traveling coach, like his own
thoughts, left the narrow horizon of the province for the vast
world of the great city, without a break in the journey. He

19G THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TC vVN

stayed in the Rue de Richelieu, in a handsome hotel close to
the boulevard, and hastened to take possession of Paris as a
famished horse rushes into a meadow.

He was not long in finding out the difference between
country and town, and was rather surprised than abashed by
the change. His mental quickness soon discovered how small
an entity he was in the midst of this all-comprehending
Babylon; how insane it would be to attempt to stem the tor-
rent of new ideas and new ways. A single incident was
enough. He delivered his father's letter of introduction to
the Due de Lenoncourt, a noble who stood high in favor with
the King. He saw the duke in his splendid mansion, among
surroundings befitting his rank. Next day he met him again.
This time the Peer of France was lounging on foot along the
boulevard, just like any ordinary mortal, with an umbrella in
his hand; he did not even wear the Blue Ribbon, without
which no knight of the order could have appeared in public
in other times. And, duke and peer and first gentleman of
the bedchamber though he was, M. de Lenoncourt, spite of his
high courtesy, could not repress a smile as he read his rela-
tive's letter ; and that smile told Yicturnien that the Collection
of Antiquities and the Tuileries were separated by more than
sixty leagues of road; the distance of several centuries lay
between them.

The names of the families grouped about the throne are
quite different in each successive reign, and the charactei
change with the names. It would seem that, in the sphei
of court, the same thing happens over and over again in each
generation ; but each time there is a quite different set of per-
sonages. If history did not prove that this is so, it would seen
incredible. The prominent men at the court of Louis XVIII.
for instance, had scarcely any connection with the Rivieres,
Blacas, d'Avarays, Vitrolles, d'Autichamps, Pasquiers, La-
rochejaqueleins, Decazes, Dambrays, Laines, de Villeles, La
Bourdonnayes, and others who shone at the court of Lo\
XV. Compare the courtiers of Henri IV. with those of Lot
XIV. ; you will hardly find five great families of the forme

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 107

time still in existence. The nephew of the great Richelieu
was a very insignificant person at the court of Louis XIV. ;
while His Majesty's favorite, Villeroi, was the grandson of a
secretary ennobled by Charles IX. And so it befell that the
d'Esgrignons, all but princes under the Valois, and all-power-
ful in the time of Henri IV., had no fortune whatever at the
court of Louis XVIIL, which gave them not so much as a
thought. At this day there are names as famous as those of
royal houses — the Foix-Graillys, for instance, or the d'Herou-
villes — left to obscurity tantamount to extinction for want of
money, the one power of the time.

All which things Victurnien beheld entirely from his own
point of view; he felt the equality that he saw in Paris as a
personal wrong. The monster Equality was swallowing down
the last fragments of social distinction in the Restoration.
Having made up his mind on this head, he immediately pro-
ceeded to try to win back his place with such dangerous, if
blunted weapons, as the age left to the noblesse. It is an ex-
pensive matter to gain the attention of Paris. To this end,
Victurnien adopted some of the ways then in vogue. He felt
that it was a necessity to have horses and fine carriages, and
all the accessories of modern luxury ; he felt, in short, "that a
man must keep abreast of the times," as de Marsay said — de
Marsay, the first dandy that he came across in the first draw-
ing-room to which he was introduced. For his misfortune,
he fell in with a set of roues, with de Marsay, de Ronquerolles,
Maxime de Trailles, des Lupeaulx, Rastignac, Ajuda-Pinto,
Beaudenord, de la Roche-Hugon, de Manerville, and the Van-
denesses, whom he met wherever he went, and a great many
houses were open to a young man with his ancient name and
reputation for wealth. He went to the Marquise d'Espard's,
to the Duchesses de Grandlieu, de Carigliano, and de Chaulieu,
to the Marquises d'Aiglemont and de Listomere, to Mme. de
Serizy's, to the Opera, to the embassies and elsewhere. The
Faubourg Saint-Germain has its provincial genealogies at its
fingers' ends; a great name once recognized and adopted
therein is a passport which opens many a door that will

198 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

scarcely turn on its hinges for unknown names or the lions of
a lower rank.

Victurnien found his relatives both amiable and ready to
welcome him so long as he did not appear as a suppliant ; he
saw at once that the surest way of obtaining nothing was to
ask for something. At Paris, if the first impulse moves people
to protect, second thoughts (which last a good deal longer)
impel them to despise the protege. Independence, vanit}', and
pride, all the young Count's better and worse feelings com-
bined, led him, on the contrary, to assume an aggressive atti-
tude. And therefore the Dues de Verneuil, de Lenoncourt,
de Chaulieu, de Navarreins, d'Herouville, de Grandlieu, and
de Maufrigneuse, the Princes de Cadignan and de Blamont-
Chauvry, were delighted to present the charming survivor of
the wreck of an ancient family at court.

Victurnien went to the Tuileries in a splendid carriage
with his armorial bearings on the panels ; but his presentation
to His Majesty made it abundantly clear to him that the
people occupied the royal mind so much that his nobility was
like to be forgotten. The restored dynasty, moreover, was
surrounded by triple ranks of eligible old men and gray-
headed courtiers ; the young noblesse was reduced to a cipher,
and this Victurnien guessed at once. He saw that there was
no suitable place for him at court, nor in the government, nor
the army, nor, indeed, anywhere else. So he launched out
into the world of pleasure. Introduced at the Elysee-Bourbon,
at the Duchesse d'Angouleme's, at the Pavilion Marsan, he
met on all sides with the surface civilities due to the heir of
an old family, not so old but it could be called to mind by the
sight of a living member. And, after all, it was not a small
thing to be remembered. In the distinction with which Vic-
turnien was honored lay the way to the peerage and a splendid
marriage; he had taken the field with a false appearance of
wealth, and his vanity would not allow him to declare his real
position. Besides, he had been so much complimented on the
figure that he made, he was so pleased with his first success,
that, like many other young men, he felt ashamed to draw

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 199

back. He took a suite of rooms in the Kue du Bac, with
stables and a complete equipment for the fashionable life
to which he had committed himself. These preliminaries cost
him fifty thousand francs, which money, moreover, the young
gentleman managed to draw in spite of all Chesnel's wise pre-
cautions, thanks to a series of unforeseen events.

Chesnel's letter certainly reached his friend's office, but
Maitre Sorbier was dead ; and Mme. Sorbier, a matter-of-fact
person, seeing that it was a business letter, handed it on to
her husband's successor. Maitre Cardot, the new notary, in-
formed the young Count that a draft on the Treasury made
payable to the deceased would be useless ; and by way of reply
to the letter, which had cost the old provincial notary so much
thought, Cardot despatched four lines intended not to reach
Chesnel's heart, but to produce the money. Chesnel made the
draft payable to Sorbier's young successor; and the latter,
feeling but little inclination to adopt his correspondent's senti-
mentality, was delighted to put himself at the Count's orders,
and gave Victurnien as much money as he wanted.

Now those who know what life in Paris means, know that
fifty thousand francs will not go very far in furniture, horses,
carriages, and elegance generally ;but it must be borne in mind
that Victurnien immediately contracted some twenty thou-
sand francs' worth of debts besides, and his tradespeople at
first were not at all anxious to be paid, for our young gen-
tleman's fortune had been prodigiously increased, partly by
rumor, partly by Josephin, that Chesnel in livery.

Victurnien had not been in town a month before he was
obliged to repair to his man of business for ten thousand
francs; he had only been playing whist with the Dues de
Navarreins, de Chaulieu, and de Lenoncourt, and now and
again at his club. He had begun by winning some thousands
of francs, but pretty soon lost five or six thousand, which
brought home to him the necessity of a purse for play. Vic-
turnien had the spirit that gains goodwill everywhere, and
puts a young man of a great family on a level with the
very highest. He was not merely admitted at once into the

200 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

band of patrician youth, but was even envied by the rest. It
was intoxicating to him to feel that he was envied, nor was
he in this mood very likely to think of reform. Indeed, he
had completely lost his head. He would not think of the
means; he dipped into his money-bags as if they could be
refilled indefinitely; he deliberately shut his eyes to the in-
evitable results of the system. In that dissipated set, in the
continual whirl of gaiety, people take the actors in their
brilliant costumes as they find them ; no one inquires whether
a man can afford to make the figure he does, there is nothing
in worse taste than inquiries as to ways and means. A man
ought to renew his wealth perpetually, and as Nature does —
below the surface and out of sight. People talk if somebody
comes to grief; they joke about a newcomer's fortune till
their minds are set at rest, and at this they draw the line.
Victurnien d'Esgrignon, with all the Faubourg Saint-Ger-
main to back him, with all his protectors exaggerating the
amount of his fortune (were it only to rid themselves of re-
sponsibility), and magnifying his possessions in the most re-
fined and well-bred way, with a hint or a word; with all
these advantages — to repeat — Victurnien was, in fact, an
eligible Count. He was handsome, witty, sound in politics ; j
his father still possessed the ancestral castle and the lands of \
the marquisate. Such a young fellow is sure of an admi-j
rable reception in houses where there are marriageable!
daughters, fair but portionless partners at dances, and young
married women who find that time hangs heavy on their'
hands. So the world, smiling, beckoned him to the fore-;
most benches in its booth ; the seats reserved for marquises are
still in the same place in Paris ; and if the names are changed,)
the things are the same as ever.

In the most exclusive circle of society in the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, Victurnien found the Chevalier's double irii
the person of the Vidame de Pamiers. The Vidame was a j
Chevalier de Valois raised to the tenth power, invested with
all the prestige of wealth, enjoying all the advantages of higr
position. The dear Vidame was a repositary for everybody 'i

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 201

secrets, and the gazette of the Faubourg besides ; nevertheless,
he was discreet, and, like other gazettes, only said things that
might safely be published. x\gain Victurnien listened to
the Chevalier's esoteric doctrines. The Vidame told young
•d'Esgrignon, without mincing matters, to make conquests
among women of quality, supplementing the advice with anec-
dotes from his own experience. The Vicomte de Pamiers,
it seemed, had permitted himself much that it would serve
no purpose to relate here; so remote was it all from our
modern manners, in which soul and passion play so large a
part, that nobody would believe it. But the excellent Vidame
did more than this.

"Dine with me at a tavern to-morrow," said he, by way
of conclusion. "We will digest our dinner at the Opera, and
afterwards I will take you to a house where several people
have the greatest wish to meet you."

The Vidame gave a delightful little dinner at the Rocher
de Cancale; three guests only were asked to meet Victurnien
— de Marsay, Rastignac, and Blondet. Emile Blondet, the
young Count's fellow-townsman, was a man of letters on
the outskirts of society to which he had been introduced by
a charming woman from the same province. This was one
of the Vicomte de Troisville's daughters, now married to the
Comte de Montcornet, one of those of Napoleon's generals
who went over to the Bourbons. The Vidame held that a
dinner-party of more than six persons was beneath contempt.
In that case, according to him, there was an end alike of
cookery and conversation, and a man could not sip his wine in
a proper frame of mind.

"I have not yet told you, my dear boy, where I mean to
take you to-night," he said, taking Victurnien's hands and
tapping on them. "You are going to see Mile, des Touches ;
all the pretty women with any pretensions to wit will be at
her house en petit comite. Literature, art, poetry, any sort
of genius, in short, is held in great esteem there. It is one
of our old-world bureaux d'esprit, with a veneer of mon-
archical doctrine, the livery of this present age."

202 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"It is sometimes as tiresome and tedious there as a pair
of new boots, but there are women with whom you cannot meet
anywhere else," said de Marsay.

"If all the poets who went there to rub up their muse were
like our friend here," said Eastignac, tapping Blondet
familiarly on the shoulder, "we should have some fun. But
a plague of odes, and ballads, and driveling meditations, and
novels with wide margins, pervades the sofas and the
atmosphere."

"I don't dislike them," said de Marsay, "so long as they
corrupt girls' minds, and don't spoil women."

"Gentlemen," smiled Blondet, "you are encroaching on my
field of literature."

"You need not talk. You have robbed us of the most
charming woman in the world, you lucky rogue; we may be
allowed to steal your less brilliant ideas," cried Eastignac.

"Yes, he is a lucky rascal," said the Vidame, and he
twitched Blondet's ear. "But perhaps Victurnien here will
be luckier still this evening "

"Already!" exclaimed de Marsay. "Why, he only came
here a month ago ; he has scarcely had time to shake the dust
of his old manor house off his feet, to wipe off the brine
in which his aunt kept him preserved; he has only just
set up a decent horse, a tilbury in the latest style, a
groom "

"No, no, not a groom," interrupted Eastignac; "he has
some sort of an agricultural laborer that he brought with him
'from his place.' Buisson, who understands a livery as well
as most, declared that the man was physically incapable of
wearing a jacket."

"I will tell you what, you ought to have modeled your-
self on Beaudenord," the Vidame said seriously. "He has
this advantage over all of you, my young friends, he has a
genuine specimen of the English tiger "

"Just see, gentlemen, what the noblesse have come to in
France!" cried Victurnien. "For them the one important
thing is to have a tiger, a thoroughbred, and baubles "

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 203

"Bless me !" said Blondet. * 'This gentleman's good sense
at times appalls me.' — Well, yes, young moralist, you nobles
have come to that. You have not even left to you that
lustre of lavish expenditure for which the dear Vidame was
famous fifty years ago. We revel on a second floor in the
Eue Montorgueil. There are no more wars with the Cardinal,
no Field of the Cloth of Gold. You, Comte d'Esgrignon, in
short, are supping in the company of one Blondet, younger
son of a miserable provincial magistrate, with whom you
would not shake hands down yonder; and in ten years' time
you may sit beside him among peers of the realm. Believe
in yourself after that, if you can."

"Ah, well/' said Eastignac, "we have passed from action to
thought, from brute force to force of intellect, we are talk-
ing ■"

"Let us not talk of our reverses," protested the Vidame;
"I have made up my mind to die merrily. If our friend here
has not a tiger as yet, he comes of a race of lions, and can dis-
pense with one."

"He cannot do without a tiger," said Blondet; "he is too
newly come to town."

"His elegance may be new as yet," returned de Marsay,
"but we are adopting it. He is worthy of us, he understands
his age, he has brains, he is nobly born and gently bred;
we are going to like him, and serve him, and push him "

"Whither?" inquired Blondet.

"Inquisitive soul !" said Eastignac.

''With whom will he take up to-night ?" de Marsay asked.

"With a whole seraglio," said the Vidame.

"Plague take it ! What can we have done that the dear
Vidame is punishing us by keeping his word to the infanta ?
I should be pitiable indeed if I did not know her "

"And I was once a coxcomb even as he," said the Vidame,
indicating de Marsay.

The conversation continued pitched in the same key, charm-
ingly scandalous, and agreeably corrupt. The dinner went
pff very pleasantly. Eastignac and de Marsay went to the

204 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Opera with the Vidame and Victurnien, with a view to fol-
lowing them afterwards to Mile, des Touches' salon. And
thither, accordingly, this pair of rakas betook themselves, cal-
culating that by that time the tragedy would have been read ;
for of all things to be taken between eleven and twelve o'clock
at night, a tragedy in their opinion was the most unwhole-
some. They went to keep a watch on Yicturnien and to em-
barrass him, a piece of schoolboy's mischief embittered by a
jealous dandy's spite. But Victurnien was gifted with that
page's effrontery which is a great help to ease of manner ; and
Eastignac, watching him as he made his entrance, was sur-
prised to see how quickly he caught the tone of the
moment.

"That young d'Esgrignon will go far, will he not?" he
said, addressing his companion.

"That is as may be," returned de Marsay, "but he is in a
fair way."

The Vidame introduced his young friend to one of the
most amiable and frivolous duchesses of the day, a lady whose
adventures caused an explosion five years later. Just then,
however, she was in the full blaze of her glory ; she had been
suspected, it is true, of equivocal conduct; but suspicion,
while it is still suspicion and not proof, marks a woman out
with the kind of distinction which slander gives to a man.
Nonentities are never slandered; they chafe because they are
left in peace. This woman was, in fact, the Duchesse de
Mauf rigneuse, a daughter of the d'Uxelles ; her father-in-law
was still alive; she was not to be the Princesse de Cadignan
for some years to come. A friend of the Duchesse de
Langeais and the Vicomtesse de Beauseant, two glories de-
parted, she was likewise intimate with the Marquise d'Espard,
with whom she disputed her fragile sovereignty as queen of
fashion. Great relations lent her countenance for a long
while, but the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse was one of those
women who, in some way, nobody knows how, or why, or
where, will spend the rents of all the lands of earth, and of

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 205

the moon likewise, if they were not out of reach. The
general outline of her character was scarcely known as yet;
de Marsay, and de Marsay only, really had read her. That
redoubtable dand}' now watched the Vidame de Pamiers' in-
troduction of his young friend to that lovely woman, and
bent over to say in Eastignac's ear :

"My dear fellow, he will go up whizz! like a rocket, and
come down like a stick," an atrociously vulgar saying which
was remarkably fulfilled.

The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had lost her heart to Vic-
turnien after first giving her mind to a serious study of
him. Any lover who should have caught the glance by which
she expressed her gratitude to the Vidame might well have
been jealous of such friendship. Women are like horses let
loose on a steppe when they feel, as the Duchess felt with the
Vidame de Pamiers, that the ground is safe ; at such moments
they are themselves; perhaps it pleases them to give, as it
were, samples of their tenderness in intimacy in this way.
It was a guarded glance, nothing was lost between eye and
eye; there was no' possibility of reflection in any mirror.
Nobody intercepted it.

"See how she has prepared herself," Eastignac said, turn-
ing to de Marsay. "What a virginal toilette; what swan's
grace in that snow-white throat of hers! How white her
gown is, and she is wearing a sash like a little girl ; she looks
round like a madonna inviolate. Who would think that you
had passed that way?"

"The very reason why she looks as she does," returned de
Marsay, with a triumphant air.

The two young men exchanged a smile. Mme. de Maufri-
gneuse saw the smile and guessed at their conversation, and
gave the pair a broadside of her eyes, an art acquired by
Frenchwomen since the Peace, when Englishwomen imported
it into this country, together with the shape of their silver
plate, their horses and harness, and the piles of insular ice
which impart a refreshing coolness to the atmosphere of any
room in which a certain number of British females are

200 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

gathered together. The young men grew serious as a couple
of clerks at the end of a homily from headquarters before
the receipt of an expected bonus.

The Duchess when she lost her heart to Victurnien had
made up her mind to play the part of romantic Innocence,
a role much understudied subsequently by other women, for
the misfortune of modern youth. Her Grace of Maufri-
gneuse had just come out as an angel at a moment's notice,
precisely as she meant to turn to literature and science some-
where about her fortieth year instead of taking to devotion.
She made a point of being like nobody else. Her
parts, her dresses, her caps, opinions, toilettes, and man-
ner of acting were all entirely new and original. Soon after
her marriage, when she was scarcely more than a girl, she
had played the part of a knowing and almost depraved wo-
man; she ventured on risky repartees with shallow people,
and betrayed her ignorance to those who knew better. As
the date of that marriage made it impossible to abstract one
little year from her age without the knowledge of Time, and
as Her Grace had reached her twenty-sixth year, she had
taken it into her head to be immaculate. She scarcely
seemed to belong to earth; she shook out her wide sleeves
as if they had been wings. Her eyes fled to heaven at too
warm a glance, or word, or thought.

There is a madonna painted by Piola, the great Genoese
painter, who bade fair to bring out a second edition of
Eaphael till his career was cut short by jealousy and murder ;
his madonna, however, you may dimly discern through a
pane of glass in a little street in Genoa.

A more chaste-eyed madonna than Piola's does not exist;
but compared with Mme. de Maufrigneuse, that heavenly
creature was a Messalina. Women wondered among them-
selves how such a giddy young thing had been transformed
by a change of dress into the fair veiled seraph who seemed
(to use an expression now in vogue) to have a soul as white
as new fallen snow on the highest Alpine crests. How had
she solved in such short space the Jesuitical problem how to

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 207

display a bosom whiter than her soul by hiding it in gauze?
How could she look so ethereal while her eyes drooped so
murderously? Those almost wanton glances seemed to give
promise of untold languorous delight, while by an ascetic's
sigh of aspiration after a better life the mouth appeared to
add that none of those promises would be fulfilled. In-
genuous youths (for there were a few to be found in the
Guards of that day) privately wondered whether, in the most
intimate moments, it were possible to speak familiarly to this
White Lady, this starry vapor slidden down from the Milky
Way. This system, which answered completely for some
years at a stretch, was turned to good account by women
of fashion, whose breasts were lined with a stout philosophy,
for they could cloak no inconsiderable exactions with these
little airs from the sacristy. Not one of the celestial creatures
but was quite well aware of the possibilities of less ethereal
love which lay in the longing of every well-conditioned male
to recall such beings to earth. It was a fashion which per-
mitted them to abide in a semi-religious, semi-Ossianic
empyrean ; they could, and did, ignore all the practical details
of daily life, a short and easy method of disposing of many
questions. De Marsay, foreseeing the future developments
of the system, added a last word, for he saw that Eastignac
was jealous of Victurnien.

"My boy," said he, "stay as you are. Our Xucingen will
make your fortune, whereas the Duchess would ruin you.
She is too expensive."

Eastignac allowed de Marsay to go without asking further
questions. He knew Paris. He knew that the most refined and
noble and disinterested of women — a woman who cannot be
induced to accept anything but a bouquet — can be as danger-
ous an acquaintance for a young man as any opera girl of
former days. As a matter of fact, the opera girl is an al-
most mythical being. As things are now at the theatres,
dancers and actresses are about as amusing as a declaration of
the rights of woman, they are puppets that go abroad in the
morning in the character of respected and respectable mothers

vol. 7 — $6

208 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

of families, and act men's parts in tight-fitting garments at
night.

Worthy M. Chesnel, in his country notary's office, was
right; he had foreseen one of the reefs on which the Count
might make shipwreck. Victurnien was dazzled by the
poetic aureole which Mme. de Mauf rigneuse chose to assume ;
he was chained and padlocked from the first hour in her
company, bound captive by that girlish sash, and caught by
the curls twined round fairy fingers. Far corrupted the boy
was already, but he really believed in that farrago of maiden-
liness and muslin, in sweet looks as much studied as an Act
of Parliament. And if the one man, who is in duty bound to
believe in feminine fibs, is deceived by them, is not that
enough ?

For a pair of lovers, the rest of their species are about as
much alive as figures on the tapestry. The Duchess, flattery
apart, was avowedly and admittedly one of the ten hand-
somest women in society. "The loveliest woman in Paris" is,
as you know, as often met with in the world of love-making
as "the finest book that has appeared in this generation," in
the world of letters.

The converse which Victurnien held with the Duchess can
be kept up at his age without too great a strain. He was
young enough and ignorant enough of life in Paris to feel
no necessity to be upon his guard, no need to keep a watch
over his lightest words and glances. The religious senti-
mentalism, which finds a broadly humorous commentary in
the after-thoughts of either speaker, puts the old-world
French chat of men and women, with its pleasant familiarity,
its lively ease, quite out of the question ; they make love in a
mist nowadays.

Victurnien was just sufficient of an unsophisticated pro-
vincial to remain suspended in a highly appropriate and un-
feigned rapture which pleased the Duchess; for women are
no more to be deceived by the comedies which men play than
by their own. Mme. de Mauf rigneuse calculated, not without
dismay, that the young Count's infatuation was likely to hold

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 209

good for six whole months of disinterested love. She looked
so lovely in this dove's mood, quenching the light in her eyes
by the golden fringe of their lashes, that when the Marquise
d'Espard bade her friend good-night, she whispered, "Good !
very good, dear!" And with those farewell words, the fair
Marquise left her rival to make the tour of the modern Pays
du Tendre; which, by the way, is not so absurd a conception
as some appear to think. New maps of the country are en-
graved for each generation; and if the names of the routes
are different, they still lead to the same capital city.

In the course of an hour's tete-a-tete, on a corner sofa,
under the eyes of the world, the Duchess brought young
d'Esgrignon as far as Scipio's Generosity, the Devotion of
Amadis, and Chivalrous Self-abnegation (for the Middle
Ages were just coming into fashion, with their daggers,
machicolations, hauberks, chain-mail, peaked shoes, and
romantic painted card-board properties). She had an ad-
mirable turn, moreover, for leaving things unsaid, for leaving
ideas in a discreet, seeming careless way, to work their way
down, one by one, into Victurnien's heart, like needles into a
cushion. She possessed a marvelous skill in reticence; she
was charming in hypocrisy, lavish of subtle promises, which
revived hope and then melted away like ice in the sun if you
looked at them closely, and most treacherous in the desire
which she felt and inspired. At the close of this charming
encounter she produced the running noose of an invitation
to call, and flung it over him with a dainty demureness which
the printed page can never set forth.

"You will forget me," she said. "You will find so many
women eager to pay court to you instead of enlightening
you. . . . But you will come back to me undeceived.
Are you coming to me first? . . . No. As you will. —
For my own part, I tell you frankly that your visits will be
a great pleasure to me. People of soul are so rare, and I
think that you are one of them. — Come, good-bye ; people will
begin to talk about us if we talk together any longer."

She made good her words and took flight. Victurnien

210 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

went soon afterwards, but not before others had guessed his
ecstatic condition; his face wore the expression peculiar to
happy men, something between an Inquisitor's calm discre-
tion and the self-contained beatitude of a devotee, fresh from
the confessional and absolution.

"Mme. de Maufrigneuse went pretty briskly to the point
this evening/' said the Duchesse de Grandlieu, when only
half-a-dozen persons were left in. Mile, des Touches' little
drawing-room — to wit, des Lupeaulx, a Master of Requests,
who at that time stood very well at court, Vandenesse, the
Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, Canalis, and Mme. de Serizy.

"D'Esgrignon and Maufrigneuse are two names that are
sure to cling together," said Mme. de Serizy, who aspired to
epigram.

"For some days past she has been out at grass on
Platonism," said des Lupeaulx.

"She will ruin that poor innocent," added Charles de
Vandenesse.

"What do you mean?" asked Mile, des Touches.

"Oh, morally and financially, beyond all doubt," said the
Vicomtesse, rising.

The cruel words were cruelly true for young d'Esgrignon.

Next morning he wrote to his aunt describing his intro-
duction into the high world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain
in bright colors flung by the prism of love, explaining the
reception which met him everywhere in a way which gratified
his father's family pride. The Marquis would have the whole
long letter read to him twice; he rubbed his hands when he
heard of the Vidame de Pamiers' dinner — the Vidame was
an old acquaintance — and of the subsequent introduction to
the Duchess; but at Blondet's name he lost himself in con-
jectures. What could the younger son of a judge, a public
prosecutor during the Revolution, have been doing there ?

There was joy that evening among the Collection of Antiq-
uities. They talked over the young Count's success. So dis-
creet were they with regard to Mme. de Maufrigneuse, that
the one man who heard the secret was the Chevalier. There

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 211

was no financial postscript at the end of the letter, no un-
pleasant concluding reference to the sinews of war, which
every young man makes in such a case. Mile. Armande
showed it to Chesnel. Chesnel was pleased and raised not a
single objection. It was clear, as the Marquis and the Cheva-
lier agreed, that a young man in favor with the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse would shortly be a hero at court, where in the
old days women were all-powerful. The Count had not
made a bad choice. The dowagers told over all the gallant
adventures of the Maufrigneuses from Louis XIII. to Louis
XYI. — they spared to inquire into preceding reigns — and
when all was done they were enchanted. — Mme. de Maufri-
gneuse was much praised for interesting herself in Vic-
turnien. Any writer of plays in search of a piece of pure
comedy would have found it well worth his while to listen
to the Antiquities in conclave.

Victurnien received charming letters from his father and
aunt, and also from the Chevalier. That gentleman recalled
himself to the Vidame's memory. He had been at Spa with
M. de Pamiers in 1778, after a certain journey made by a
celebrated Hungarian princess. And Chesnel also wrote.
The fond flattery to which the unhappy boy was only too well
accustomed shone out of every page; and Mile. Armande
seemed to share half of Mme. de Maufrigneuse's hap-
piness.

Thus happy in the approval of his family, the young Count
made a spirited beginning in the perilous and costly ways of
dandyism. He had five horses — he was moderate — de Marsay
had fourteen ! He returned the Vidame's hospitality, even in-
cluding Blondet in the invitation, as well as de Marsay and
Eastignac. The dinner cost five hundred francs, and the noble
provincial was feted on the same scale. Victurnien played a
good deal, and, for his misfortune, at the fashionable game of
whist.

He laid out his days in busy idleness. Every day between
twelve and three o'clock he was with the Duchess; after-

212 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

wards he went to meet her in the Bois de Boulogne and ride
beside her carriage. Sometimes the charming couple rode
together, but this was early in fine summer mornings.
Society, balls, the theatre, and gaiety filled the Count's even-
ing hours. Everywhere Victurnien made a brilliant figure;
everywhere he flung the pearls of his wit broadcast. He gave
his opinion on men, affairs, and events in profound sayings ; he
would have put you in mind of a fruit-tree putting forth all
its strength in blossom. He was leading an enervating life,
wasteful of monejr, and even yet more wasteful, it may be,
of a man's soul ; in that life the fairest talents are buried out
of sight, the most incorruptible honesty perishes, the best-
tempered springs of will are slackened.

The Duchess, so white and fragile and angel-like, felt at-
tracted to the dissipations of bachelor life; she enjoyed first
nights, she liked anything amusing, anything improvised.
Bohemian restaurants lay outside her experience ; so d'Esgri-
gnon got up a charming little party at the Rocher de Cancale
for her benefit, asked all the amiable scamps whom she
cultivated and sermonized, and there was a vast amount of
merriment, wit, and gaiety, and a corresponding bill to pay.
That supper party led to others. And through it all Vic-
turnien worshiped her as an angel. Mme. de Maufrigneuse
for him was still an angel, untouched by any taint of earth;
an angel at the Varietes, where she sat out the half-obscene,
vulgar farces, which made her laugh; an angel through the
cross-fire of highly-flavored jests and scandalous anecdotes,
which enlivened a stolen frolic; a languishing angel in the
latticed box at the Vaudeville; an angel while she criticised
the postures of opera dancers with the experience of an elderly
habitue of le coin de la reine; an angel at the Porte Saint
Martin, at the little boulevard theatres, at the masked balls,
which she enjoyed like any schoolboy. She was an angel
who asked him for the love that lives by self-abnegation and
heroism and self-sacrifice ; an angel who would have her lover
live like an English lord, with an income of a million francs
D'Esgrignon once exchanged a horse because the animal'*

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 213

coat did not satisfy her notions. At play she was an angel9
and certainly no bourgeoise that ever lived could have bidden
d'Esgrignon "Stake for me!" in such an angelic way. She
was so divinely reckless in her folly, that a man might well
have sold his soul to the devil lest this angel should lose her
taste for earthly pleasures.

The first winter went by. The Count had drawn on M.
Cardot for the trifling sum of thirty thousand francs over
and above Chesnel's remittance. As Cardot very carefully
refrained from using his right of remonstrance, Victurnien
now learned for the first time that he had overdrawn his ac-
count. He was the more offended by an extremely polite re-
fusal to make any further advance, since it so happened that
he had just lost six thousand francs at play at the club, and
he could not very well show himself there until they were
paid.

After growing indignant with Maitre Cardot, who had
trusted him with thirty thousand francs (Cardot had written
to Chesnel, but to the fair Duchess' favorite he made the most
of his so-called confidence in him), after all this, d'Esgrignon
was obliged to ask the lawyer to tell him how to set about
raising the money, since debts of honor were in question.

"Draw bills on your father's banker, and take them to his
correspondent; he, no doubt, will discount them for you.
Then write to your family, and tell them to remit the amount
to the banker."

An inner voice seemed to suggest du Croisier's name in
this predicament. He had seen du Croisier on his knees to
the aristocracy, and of the man's real disposition he was en-
tirely ignorant. So to du Croisier he wrote a very offhand
letter, informing him that he had drawn a bill of exchange
on him for ten thousand francs, adding that the amount
would be repaid on receipt of the letter either by M. Chesnel
or by Mile. Armande d'Esgrignon. Then he indited two
touching epistles — one to Chesnel, another to his aunt. In
the matter of going headlong to ruin, a young man often

214 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

shows singular ingenuity and ability, and fortune favors him.
In the morning Victurnien happened on the name of the Paris
bankers in correspondence with du Croisier, and de Marsay
furnished him with the Kellers' address. De Marsay knew
everything in Paris. The Kellers took the bill and gave him
the sum without a word, after deducting the discount. The
balance of the account was in du Croisier's favor.

But the gaming debt was as nothing in comparison with the
state of things at home. Invoices showered in upon
Victurnien.

"I say ! Do you trouble yourself about that sort of thing ?"
Eastignac said, laughing. "Are you putting them in order,
my dear boy? I did not think you were so business-like."

"My dear fellow, it is quite time I thought about it ; there
are twenty odd thousand francs there."

De Marsay, coming in to look up d'Esgrignon for a steeple-
chase, produced a dainty little pocket-book, took out twenty
thousand francs, and handed them to him.

"It is the best way of keeping the money safe," said he;
"I am twice enchanted to have won it yesterday from my
honored father, Milord Dudley."

Such French grace completely fascinated d'Esgrignon; he
took it for friendship; and as to the money, punctually for-
got to pay his debts writh it, and spent it on his pleasures.
The fact was that de Marsay was looking on with an unspeak-
able pleasure while young d'Esgrignon "got out of his depth,"
in dandy's idiom ; it pleased de Marsay in all sorts of fondling
ways to lay an arm on the lad's shoulder ; by and by he should
feel its weight, and disappear the sooner. For de Marsay
was jealous ; the Duchess flaunted her love affair ; she was not
at home to other visitors when d'Esgrignon wras with her.
And besides, de Marsay was one of those savage humorists
who delight in mischief, as Turkish women in the bath. So,
when he had carried off the prize, and bets were settled at the
tavern where they breakfasted, and a bottle or two of good
wine had appeared, de Marsay turned to d'Esgrignon with a
laugh :

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 215

Those bills that you are worrying over are not yours, I
sure/'

"Eh ! if they weren't, why should he worry himself ?" asked
Eastignac.

"And whose should they be ?" d'Esgrignon inquired.

"Then you do not know the Duchess' position?" queried
de Marsay, as he sprang into the saddle.

"No," said d'Esgrignon, his curiosity aroused.

"Well, dear fellow, it is like this," returned de Marsay —
"thirty thousand francs to Victorine, eighteen thousand
francs to Houbigaut, lesser amounts to Herbault, Nattier,
Nourtier, and those Latour people, — altogether a hundred
thousand francs."

"An angel!" cried d'Esgrignon, with eyes uplifted to
heaven.

"This is the bill for her wings," Eastignac cried face-
tiously.

"She owes all that, my dear boy," continued de Marsay,
"precisely because she is an angel. But we have all seen
angels in this position," he added, glancing at Eastignac;
"there is this about women that is sublime : they understand
nothing of money ; they do not meddle with it, it is no affair
of theirs ; they are invited guests at the 'banquet of life,' as
some poet or other said that came to an end in the work-
house."

"How do you know this when I do not?" d'Esgrignon
artlessly returned.

"You are sure to be the last to know it, just as she is sure
to be the last to hear that you are in debt."

"I thought she had a hundred thousand livres a year," said
d'Esgrignon.

"Her husband," replied de Marsay, "lives apart from her.
He stays with his regiment and practises economy, for he
has one or two little debts of his own as well, has our dear
Duke. Where do you come from ? Just learn to do as we do
and keen our friends' accounts for them. Mile. Diane (I fell
in love with her for the name's sake), Mile. Diane d'Uxelles

216 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

brought her husband sixty thousand livres of income ; for the
last eight years she has lived as if she had two hundred thou-
sand. It is perfectly plain that at this moment her lands are
mortgaged up to their full value ; some fine morning the crash
must come, and the angel will be put to flight by — must it be
said? — by sheriff's officers that have the effrontery to lay
hands on an angel just as they might take hold of one
of us."

"Poor angel !"

"Lord ! it costs a great deal to dwell in a Parisian heaven ;
you must whiten your wings and your complexion every morn-
ing," said Rastignac.

Now as the' thought of confessing his debts to his beloved
Diane had passed through d'Esgrignon's mind, something
like a shudder ran through him when he remembered that he
still owed sixty thousand francs, to say nothing of bills to
come for another ten thousand. He went back melancholy
enough. His friends remarked his ill-disguised preoccupa-
tion, and spoke of it among themselves at dinner.

"Young d'Esgrignon is getting out of his depth. He is
not up to Paris. He will blow his brains out. A little
fool !" and so on and so on.

D'Esgrignon, however, promptly took comfort. His serv-
ant brought him two letters. The first was from Chesnel.
A letter from Chesnel smacked of the stale grumbling faith-
fulness of honesty and its consecrated formulas. With all
respect he put it aside till the evening. But the second
letter he read with unspeakable pleasure. In Ciceronian
phrases, du Croisier groveled before him, like a Sganarelle
before a Geronte, begging the young Count in future to
spare him the affront of first depositing the amount of the
bills which he should condescend to draw. The concluding
phrase seemed meant to convey the idea that here was an open
cashbox full of coin at the service of the noble d'Esgrignon
family. So strong was the impression that Victurnien, like
Sganarelle or Mascarille in the play, like everybody else who
feels a twinge of conscience at his finger-tips, made an in-
voluntary gesture.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 217

Now that he was sure of unlimited credit with the Kel-
lers, he opened Chesnel's letter gaily. He had expected four
full pages, full of expostulation to the brim ; he glanced down
the sheet for the familiar words "prudence," "honor," "de-
termination to do right," and the like, and saw something
else instead which made his head swim.

"Monsieur le Comte, — Of all my fortune I have now but
two hundred thousand francs left. I beg of you not to ex-
ceed that amount, if you should do one of the most devoted
servants of your family the honor of taking it. I present my
respects to you. Chesnel."

"He is one of Plutarch's men," Victurnien said to himself,
as he tossed the letter on the table. He felt chagrined ; such
magnanimity made him feel very small.

"There! one must reform," he thought; and instead of
going to a restaurant and spending fifty or sixty francs over
his dinner, he retrenched by dining with the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse, and told her about the letter.

"I should like to see that man," she said, letting her eyes
shine like two fixed stars.

"What would you do?"

"Why, he should manage my affairs for me."

Diane de Maufrigneuse was divinely dressed; she meant
her toilet to do honor to Victurnien. The levity with which
she treated his affairs or, more properly speaking, his debts
fascinated him.

The charming pair went to the Italiens. Never had that
beautiful and enchanting woman looked more seraphic, more
ethereal. Nobody in the house could have believed that she had
debts which reached the sum total mentioned by de Marsay
that very morning. No single one of the cares of earth had
touched that sublime forehead of hers, full of woman's pride
of the highest kind. In her, a pensive air seemed to be
some gleam of an earthly love, nobly extinguished. The men
for the most part were wagering that Victurnien, with his

218 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

handsome figure, laid her under contribution ; while the wo-
men, sure of their rival's subterfuge, admired her as Michael
Angelo admired Raphael, in petto. Yicturnien loved Diane,
according to one of these ladies, for the sake of her hair —
she had the most beautiful fair hair in France ; another main-
tained that Diane's pallor was her principal merit, for she
was not really well shaped, her dress made the most of her
figure; yet others thought that Victurnien loved her for her
foot, her one good point, for she had a flat figure. But
(and this brings the present-day manner of Paris before you
in an astonishing manner) whereas all the men said that the
Duchess was subsidizing Victurnien' s splendor, the women,
on the other hand, gave people to understand that it was Vic-
turnien who paid for the angel's wings, as Rastignac said.

As they drove back again, Victurnien had it on the tip of
his tongue a score of times to open this chapter, for the
Duchess' debts weighed more heavily upon his mind than
his own; and a score of times his purpose died away before
the attitude of the divine creature beside him. He could see
her by the light of the carriage lamps; she was bewitching
in the love-languor which always seemed to be extorted by
the violence of passion from her madonna's purity. The
Duchess did not fall into the mistake of talking of her virtue,
of her angel's estate, as provincial women, her imitators, do.
She was far too clever. She made him, for whom she made
such great sacrifices, think these things for himself. At the
end of six months she could make him feel that a harmless
kiss on her hand was a deadly sin; she contrived that every
grace should be extorted from her, and this with such con-
summate art, that it was impossible not to feel that she was
more an angel than ever when she yielded.

None but Parisian women are clever enough always to
give a new charm to the moon, to romanticize the stars, to
roll in the same sack of charcoal and emerge each time whiter
than ever. This is the highest refinement of intellectual and
Parisian civilization. Women beyond the Rhine or the Eng-
lish Channel believe nonsense of this sort when they utter

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 219

it; while your Parisienne makes her lover believe that she is
an angel, the better to add to his bliss by flattering his vanity
on both sides — temporal and spiritual. Certain persons,
detractors of the Duchess, maintain that she was the first
dupe of her own white magic. A wicked slander. The
Duchess believed in nothing but herself.

By the end of the year 1823 the Kellers had supplied Vic-
turnien with two hundred thousand francs, and neither Ches-
nel nor Mile. Armande knew anything about it. He had had,
besides, two thousand crowns from Chesnel at one time and
another, the better to hide the sources on which he was
drawing. He wrote lying letters to his poor father and aunt,
who lived on, happy and deceived, like most happy people
under the sun. The insidious current of life in Paris was
bringing a dreadful catastrophe upon the great and noble
house ; and only one person was in the secret of it. This was
du Croisier. He rubbed his hands gleefully as he went past
in the dark and looked in at the Antiquities. He had good
hope of attaining his ends ; and his ends were not, as hereto-
fore, the simple ruin of the d'Esgrignons, but the dishonor
of their house. He felt instinctively at such times that his
revenge was at hand ; he scented it in the wind ! He had been
sure of it indeed from the day when he discovered that the
young Count's burden of debt was growing too heavy for the
boy to bear.

Du Croisier's first step was to rid himself of his most
hated enemy, the venerable Chesnel. The good old man lived
in the Rue du Bercail, in a house with a steep-pitched roof.
There was a little paved courtyard in front, where the rose-
bushes grew and clambered up to the windows of the upper
story. Behind lay a little country garden, with its box-edged
borders, shut in by damp, gloomy-looking walls. The prim,
gray-painted street door, with its wicket opening and bell
attached, announced quite as plainly as the official scutcheon
that "a notary lives here."

It was half-past five o'clock in the afternoon, at which hour
the old man usually sat digesting his dinner. He had drawn

220 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

his black leather-covered armchair before the fire, and put
on his armor, a painted pasteboard contrivance shaped like
a top boot, which protected his stockinged legs from the heat
of the fire; for it was one of the good man's habits to sit
for a while after dinner with his feet on the dogs and to stir
up the glowing coals. He always ate too much ; he was fond
of good living. Alas ! if it had not been for that little fail-
ing, would he not have been more perfect than it is permitted
to mortal man to be ? Chesnel had finished his cup of coffee.
His old housekeeper had just taken away the tray which had
been used for the purpose for the last twenty years. He was
waiting for his clerks to go before he himself went out for his
game at cards, and meanwhile he was thinking — no need to
ask of whom or what. A day seldom passed but he asked him-
self, "Where is he? What is he doing?" He thought that
the Count was in Italy with the fair Duchesse de Maufri-
gneuse.

When every franc of a man's fortune has come to him,
not by inheritance, but through his own earning and saving,
it is one of his sweetest pleasures to look back upon the pains
that have gone to the making of it, and then to plan out
a future for his crowns. This it is to conjugate the verb "to
enjoy" in every tense. And the old lawyer, whose affections
were all bound up in a single attachment, was thinking that
all the carefully-chosen, well-tilled land which he had pinched
and scraped to buy would one day go to round the d'Esgri-
gnon estates, and the thought doubled his pleasure. His
pride swelled as he sat at his ease in the old armchair; and
the building of glowing coals, which he raised with the tongs,
sometimes seemed to him to be the old noble house built up
again, thanks to his care. He pictured the young Count's
prosperity, and told himself that he had done well to live for
such an aim. Chesnel was not lacking in intelligence ; sheer
goodness was not the sole source of his great devotion ; he
had a pride of his own; he was like the nobles who used to
rebuild a pillar in a cathedral to inscribe their name upon it ;
he meant his name to be remembered by the great house which

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 221

he had restored. Future generations of d'Esgrignons should
speak of old Chesnel. Just at this point his old housekeeper
came in with signs of extreme alarm in her countenance.

"Is the house on fire, Brigitte?"

"Something of the sort," said she. "Here is M. du Croisier
wanting to speak to you "

"M. du Croisier," repeated the old lawyer. A stab of cold
misgiving gave him so sharp a pang at the heart that he
dropped the tongs. "M. du Croisier here!" thought he,
"our chief enemy !"

Du Croisier came in at that moment, like a cat that scents
milk in a dairy. He made a bow, seated himself quietly in
the easy-chair which the lawyer brought forward, and pro-
duced a bill for two hundred and twenty-seven thousand
francs, principal and interest, the total amount of sums ad-
vanced to M. Victurnien in bills of exchange drawn upon du
Croisier, and duly honored by him. Of these, he now de-
manded immediate payment, with a threat of proceeding to
extremities with the heir-presumptive of the house. Chesnel
turned the unlucky letters over one by one, and asked the
enemy to keep the secret. This he engaged to do if he were
paid within forty-eight hours. He was pressed for money;
he had obliged various manufacturers; and there followed a
series of the financial fictions by which neither notaries nor
borrowers are deceived. Chesnel's eyes were dim; he could
scarcely keep back the tears. There was but one way of
raising the money; he must mortgage his own lands up to
their full value. But when du Croisier learned the difficulty
in the way of repayment, he forgot that he was hard pressed ;
he no longer wanted ready money, and suddenly came out
with a proposal to buy the old lawyer's property. The sale
was completed within two days. Poor Chesnel could not
bear the thought of the son of the house undergoing a five
years' imprisonment for debt. So in a few days' time noth-
ing remained to him but his practice, the sums that were due
to him, and the house in which he lived. Chesnel, stripped
of all his lands, paced to and fro in his private office, paneled

222 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

with dark oak, his eyes fixed on the beveled edges of the
chestnut cross-beams of the ceiling, or on the trellised vines
in the garden outside. He was not thinking of his farms
now, nor of Le Jard, his dear house in the country ; not he.

"What will become of him ? He ought to come back ; they
must marry him to some rich heiress," he said to himself;
and his eyes were dim, his head heavy.

How to approach Mile. Armande, and in what words to
break the news to her, he did not know. The man who had
just paid the debts of the family quaked at the thought of con-
fessing these things. He went from the Rue du Bercail to the
Hotel d'Esgrignon with pulses throbbing like some girl's heart
when she leaves her father's roof by stealth, not to return
again till she is a mother and her heart is broken.

Mile. Armande had just received a charming letter, charm-
ing in its hypocrisy. Her nephew was the happiest man
under the sun. He had been to the baths, he had been
traveling in Italy with Mme. de Maufrigneuse, and now sent
his journal to his aunt. Every sentence was instinct with
love. There were enchanting descriptions of Venice, and
fascinating appreciations of the great works of Venetian art ;
there were most wonderful pages full of the Duomo at Milan,
and again of Florence; he described the Apennines, and
how they differed from the Alps, and how in some village
like Chiavari happiness lay all around you, ready made.

The poor aunt was under the spell. She saw the far-off
country of love, she saw, hovering above the land, the angel
whose tenderness gave to all that beauty a burning glow.
She was drinking in the letter at long draughts ; how should
it have been otherwise ? The girl who had put love from her
was now a woman ripened by repressed and pent-up passion,
by all the longings continually and gladly offered up as a
sacrifice on the altar of the hearth. Mile. Armande was not
like the Duchess. She did not look like an angel. She was
rather like the little, straight, slim and slender, ivory-tinted
statues, which those wonderful sculptors, the builders oi
cathedrals, placed here and there about the buildings. Wild

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 223

plants sometimes find a hold in the damp niches, and weave
a crown of beautiful bluebell flowers about the carved stone.
At this moment the blue buds were unfolding in the fair
saint's eyes. Mile. Armande loved the charming couple as
if they stood apart from real life; she saw nothing wrong in
a married woman's love for Victurnien ; any other woman she
would have judged harshly ; but in this case, not to have loved
her nephew would have been the unpardonable sin. Aunts,
mothers, and sisters have a code of their own for nephews and
sons and brothers.

Mile. Armande was in Venice; she saw the lines of fairy
palaces that stand on either side of the Grand Canal; she was
sitting in Victurnien's gondola ;he was telling her what happi-
ness it had been to feel that the Duchess' beautiful hand lay in
his own, to know that she loved him as they floated together on
the breast of the amorous Queen of Italian seas. But even in
that moment of bliss, such as angels know, some one appeared
in the garden walk. It was Chesnel ! Alas ! the sound of
his tread on the gravel might have been the sound of the
sands running from Death's hour-glass to be trodden under
his unshod feet. The sound, the sight of a dreadful hopeless-
ness in Chesnel's face, gave her that painful shock which fol-
lows a sudden recall of the senses when the soul has sent them
forth into the world of dreams.

"What is it ?" she cried, as if some stab had pierced to her
heart.

"All is lost !" said Chesnel. "M. le Comte will bring dis-
honor upon the house if we do not set it in order." He held
out the bills, and described the agony of the last few days in
a few simple but vigorous and touching words.

"He is deceiving us ! The miserable boy !" cried Mile.
Armande, her heart swelling as the blood surged back to it
in heavy throbs.

"Let us both say mea culpa, mademoiselle," the old lawyer
said stoutly; "we have always allowed him to have his own
way; he needed stern guidance; he could not have it from
you with your inexperience of life ; nor from me, for he would
not listen to me. He has had no mother."
vol. 7—37

224 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"Fate sometimes deals terribly with a noble house in de-
cay," said Mile. Armande, with tears in her eyes.

The Marquis came up as she spoke. He had been walking
up and down the garden while he read the letter sent by his
son after his return. Victurnien gave his itinerary from an
aristocrat's point of view; telling how he had been welcomed
by the greatest Italian families of Genoa, Turin, Milan,
Florence, Venice, Eome, and Naples. This flattering recep-
tion he owed to his name, he said, and partly, perhaps, to the
Duchess as well. In short, he had made his appearance
magnificently, and as befitted a d'Esgrignon.

"Have you been at your old tricks, Chesnel?" asked the
Marquis.

Mile. Armande made Chesnel an eager sign, dreadful to
see. They understood each other. The poor father, the
flower of feudal honor, must die with all his illusions. A
compact of silence and devotion was ratified between the two
noble hearts by a simple inclination of the head.

"Ah! Chesnel, it was not exactly in this way that the
d'Esgrignons went into Italy at the end of the fourteenth
century, when Marshal Trivulzio, in the service of the King
of France, served under a d'Esgrignon, who had a Bayard too
under his orders. Other times, other pleasures. And, for
that matter, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse is at least the
equal of a Marchesa di Spinola."

And, on the strength of his genealogical tree, the old man
swung himself off with a coxcomb's air, as if he himself had
once made a conquest of the Marchesa di Spinola, and still
possessed the Duchess of to-day.

The two companions in unhappiness were left together on
the garden bench, with the same thought for a bond of union.
They sat for a long time, saying little save vague, unmean-
ing words, watching the father walk away in his happiness,
gesticulating as if he were talking to himself.

"What will become of him now?" Mile. Armande asked
after a while.

"Du Croisier has sent instructions to the MM. Keller; he

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 225

fs not to be allowed to draw any more without authoriza-
tion."

"And there are debts/' continued Mile. Armande.

"I am afraid so."

"If he is left without resources, what will he do?"

"I dare not answer that question to myself."

"But he must be drawn out of that life, he must come back
to us, or he will have nothing left."

"And nothing else left to him," Chesnel said gloomily. But
Mile. Armande as yet did not and could not understand the
full force of those words.

"Is there any hope of getting him away from that woman,
that Duchess? Perhaps she leads him on."

"He would not stick at a crime to be with her," said
Chesnel, trying to pave the way to an intolerable thought by
others less intolerable.

"Crime," repeated Mile. Armande. "Oh, Chesnel, no one
but you would think of such a thing!" she added, with a
withering look; before such a look from a woman's eyes no
mortal can stand. "There is but one crime that a noble
can commit — the crime of high treason; and when he is be-
headed, the block is covered with a black cloth, as it is for
kings."

"The times have changed very much," said Chesnel, shak-
ing his head. Victurnien had thinned his last thin, white
hairs. "Our Martyr-King did not die like the English King
Charles."

That thought soothed Mile. Armande's splendid indigna-
tion ; a shudder ran through her ; but still she did not realize
what Chesnel meant.

"To-morrow we will decide what we must do," she said;
"it needs thought. At the worst, we have our lands."

"Yes," said Chesnel. "You and M. le Marquis own the
estate conjointly; but the larger part of it is yours. You
can raise money upon it without saying a word to him."

The players at whist, reversis, boston, and back-

22G THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

gammon noticed that evening that Mile. Armande's features,
usually so serene and pure, showed signs of agitation.

"That poor heroic child!" said the old Marquise de
Casteran, "she must be suffering still. A woman never knows
what her sacrifices to her family may cost her."

Next day it was arranged with Chesnel that Mile. Armande
should go to Paris to snatch her nephew from perdition. If
any one could carry off Victurnien, was it not the woman
whose motherly heart yearned over him? Mile. Armande
made up her mind that she would go to the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse and tell her all. Still, some sort of pretext
was necessary to explain the journey to the Marquis and the
whole town. At some cost to her maidenly delicacy, Mile.
Armande allowed it to be thought that she was suffering from
a complaint which called for a consultation of skilled and
celebrated physicians. Goodness knows whether the town
talked of this or no! But Mile. Armande saw that some-
thing far more to her than her own reputation was at stake.
She set out. Chesnel brought her his last bag of louis; she
took it, without paying any attention to it, as she took her
white capuchine and thread mittens.

"Generous girl ! What grace !" he said, as he put her into
the carriage with her maid, a woman who looked like a gray
sister.

Du Croisier had thought out his revenge, as provincials
think out everything. For studying out a question in all its
bearings, there are no folk in this world like savages, peasants,
and provincials; and this is how, when they proceed from
thought to action, you find every contingency provided for
from beginning to end. Diplomatists are children compared
with these classes of mammals; they have time before them,
an element which is lacking to those people who are obliged
to think about a great many things, to superintend the prog-
ress of all kinds of schemes, to look forward for all sorts of
contingencies in the wider interests of human affairs. Had
du Croisier sounded poor Victurnien's nature so well, that
he foresaw how easily the young Count would lend himself

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 227

to his schemes of revenge? Or was he merely profiting by
an opportunity for which he had been on the watch for
years ? One circumstance there was, to be sure, in his man-
ner of preparing his stroke, which shows a certain skill.
Who was it that gave du Croisier warning of the moment?
Was it the Kellers ? Or could it have been President du Eon-
ceret's son, then finishing his law studies in Paris?

Du Croisier wrote to Victurnien, telling him that the Kel-
lers had been instructed to advance no more money ; and that
letter was timed to arrive just as the Duchesse de Maufri-
gneuse was in the utmost perplexity, and the Comte d'Esgri-
gnon consumed by the sense of a poverty as dreadful as it was
cunningly hidden. The wretched young man was exerting
all his ingenuity to seem as if he were wealthy !

Now in the letter which informed the victim that in future
the Kellers would make no further advances without security,
there was a tolerably wide space left between the forms of
an exaggerated respect and the signature. It was quite easy
to tear off the best part of the letter and convert it into a
bill of exchange for any amount. The diabolical missive had
even been enclosed in an envelope, so that the other side of the
sheet was blank. When it arrived, Victurnien was writhing
in the lowest depths of despair. After two years of the most
prosperous, sensual, thoughtless, and luxurious life, he found
himself face to face with the most inexorable poverty ; it was
an absolute impossibility to procure money. There had been
some throes of crisis before the journey came to an end.
With the Duchess' help he had managed to extort various
sums from bankers; but it had been with the greatest
difficulty, and, moreover, those very amounts were about to
start up again before him as overdue bills of exchange in all
their rigor, with a stern summons to pay from the Bank
of France and the commercial court. All through the en-
joyments of those last weeks the unhappy boy had felt the
point of the Commander's sword; at every supper-party he
heard, like Don Juan, the heavy tread of the statue outside
upon the stairs. He felt an unaccountable creeping of the flash,

228 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

a warning that the sirocco of debt is nigh at hand. He
reckoned on chance. For five years he had never turned up
a blank in the lotted ; his purse had always been replenished.
After Chesnel had come du Croisier (he told himself), after
du Croisier surely another gold mine would pour out its
wealth. And besides, he was winning great sums at play;
his luck at play had saved him several unpleasant steps al-
ready; and often a wild hope sent him to the Salon des
Etrangers only to lose his winnings afterwards at whist at the
club. His life for the past two months had been like the
immortal finale of Mozart's Don Giovanni; and of a truth,
if a young man has come to such a plight as Victurnien's,
that finale is enough to make him shudder. Can anything
better prove the enormous power of music than that sublime
rendering of the disorder and confusion arising out of a life
wholly given up to sensual indulgence? that fearful picture
of a deliberate effort to shut out the thought of debts and
duels, deceit and evil luck? In that music Mozart disputes
the palm with Moliere. The terrific finale, with its glow, its
power, its despair and laughter, its grisly spectres and elfish
women, centres about the prodigal's last effort made in the
after-supper heat of wine, the frantic struggle which ends
the drama. Victurnien was living through this infernal
poem, and alone. He saw visions of himself — a friendless,
solitary outcast, reading the words carved on the stone, the
last words on the last page of the book that had held him
spellbound — the end !

Yes; for him all would be at an end, and that soon. Al-
ready he saw the cold, ironical eyes which his associates would
turn upon him, and their amusement over his downfall.
Some of them he knew were playing high on that gambling-
table kept open all day long at the Bourse, or in private
houses at the clubs, and anywhere and everywhere in Paris;
but not one of these men could spare a banknote to save an
intimate. There was no help for it — Chesnel must be ruined.
He had devoured Chesnel's living.

He sat with the Duchess in their box at the Italiens, the

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN i!2t)

whole house envying them their happiness, and while he
smiled at her, all the Furies were tearing at his heart. In-
deed, to give some idea of the depths of doubt, despair, and
incredulity in which the boy was groveling; he who so clung
to life — the life which the angel had made so fair — who so
loved it, that he would have stooped to baseness merely to
live; he, the pleasure-loving scapegrace, the degenerate
d'Esgrignon, had even taken out his pistols, had gone so far
as to think of suicide. He who would never have brooked the
appearance of an insult was abusing himself in language
which no man is likely to hear except from himself.

He left du Croisier's letter lying open on the bed.
Josephin had brought it in at nine o'clock. Victurnien's
furniture had been seized, but he slept none the less. After
he came back from the Opera, he and the Duchess had gone
to a voluptuous retreat, where they often spent a few hours
together after the most brilliant court balls and evening
parties and gaieties. Appearances were very cleverly saved.
Their love-nest was a garret like any other to all appearance;
Mme. de Maufrigneuse was obliged to bow her head with its
court feathers or wreath of flowers to enter in at the door;
but within all the peris of the East had made the chamber
fair. And now that the Count was on the brink of ruin, he
had longed to bid farewell to the dainty nest, which he had
built to realize a day-dream worthy of his angel. Presently
adversity would break the enchanted eggs ; there would be no
brood of white doves, no brilliant tropical birds, no more of
the thousand bright-winged fancies which hover above our
heads even to the last days of our lives. Alas ! alas ! in three
days he must be gone ; his bills had fallen into the hands of
the money-lenders, the law proceedings had reached the last
stage.

An evil thought crossed his brain. He would fly with
the Duchess; they would live in some undiscovered nook in
the wilds of North or South America ; but — he would fly with
a fortune, and leave his creditors to confront their bills. To
carry out the plan, he had only to cut off the lower portion

230 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

of that letter with du Croisier's signature, and to fill in the
figures to turn it into a bill, and present it to the Kellers.
There was a dreadful struggle with temptation; tears were
shed, but the honor of the family triumphed, subject to one
condition. Victurnien wanted to be sure of his beautiful
Diane; he would do nothing unless she should consent to
their flight. So he went to the Duchess in the Eue Faubourg
Saint-Honore, and found her in coquettish morning dress,
which cost as much in thought as in money, a fit dress in
which to begin to play the part of Angel at eleven o'clock in
the morning.

Mme. de Maufrigneuse was somewhat pensive. Cares
of a similar kind were gnawing her mind ; but she took them
gallantly. Of all the various feminine organizations
classified by physiologists, there is one that has something
indescribably terrible about it. Such women combine
strength of soul and clear insight, with a faculty for prompt
decision, and a recklessness, or rather resolution in a crisis
which would shake a man's nerves. And these powers lie out
of sight beneath an appearance of the most graceful helpless-
ness. Such women only among womankind afford examples
of a phenomenon which Buffon recognized in men alone, to
wit, the union, or rather the disunion, of two different natures
in one human being. Other women are wholly women;
wholly tender, wholly devoted, wholly mothers, completely
null and completely tiresome; nerves and brain and blood
are all in harmony; but the Duchess, and others like her,
are capable of rising to the highest heights of feelings, or
of showing the most selfish insensibility. It is one of the
glories of Moliere that he has given us a wonderful portrait
of such a woman, from one point of view only, in that great-
est of his full-length figures — Celimene; Celimene is the
typical aristocratic woman, as Figaro, the second edition of
Panurge, represents the people.

So the Duchess, being overwhelmed with debt, laid it upon
herself to give no more than a moment's thought to the
avalanche of cares, and to take her resolution once and for

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 231

all ; Napoleon could take up or lay down the burden of his
thoughts in precisely the same way. The Duchess possessed
the faculty of standing aloof from herself; she could look on
as a spectator at the crash when it came, instead of submitting
to be buried beneath. This was certainly great, but repulsive
in a woman. When she awoke in the morning she collected
her thoughts; and by the time she had begun to dress she
had looked at the danger in its fullest extent and faced the
possibilities of terrific downfall. She pondered. Should
she take refuge in a foreign country? Or should she go to
the King and declare her debts to him ? Or again, should she
fascinate a du Tillet or a Nucingen, and gamble on the
stock exchange to pay her creditors? The city man would
find the money; he would be intelligent enough to bring her
nothing but the profits, without so much as mentioning the
losses, a piece, of delicacy which would gloss all over. The
catastrophe, and these various ways of averting it, had all
been reviewed quite coolly, calmly, and without trepida-
tion.

As a naturalist takes up some king of butterflies and
fastens him down on cotton-wool with a pin, so Mme. de
Maufrigneuse had plucked love out of her heart while she
pondered the necessity of the moment, and was quite ready to
replace the beautiful passion on its immaculate setting so
soon as her duchess' coronet was safe. She knew none of
the hesitation which Cardinal Eichelieu hid from all the world
but Pere Joseph; none of the doubts that Napoleon kept at
first entirely to himself. "Either the one or the other," she
told herself.

She was sitting by the fire, giving orders for her toilette
for a drive in the Bois if the weather should be fine, when
Victurnien came in.

The Comte d'Esgrignon, with all his stifled capacity, his
so keen intellect, was in exactly the state which might have
been looked for in the woman. His heart was beating
violently, the perspiration broke out over him as he stood
in his dandy's trappings ; he was afraid as yet to lay a hand

232 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

on the corner-stone which upheld the pyramid of his life
with Diane. So much it cost him to know the truth. The
cleverest men are fain to deceive themselves on one or two
points if the truth once known is likely to humiliate them
in their own eyes, and damage themselves with themselves.
Victurnien forced his own irresolution into the field by com-
mitting himself.

"What is the matter with you?" Diane de Maufrigneuse
had said at once, at the sight of her beloved Victurnien's
face.

"Why, dear Diane, I am in such perplexity; a man gone
to the bottom and at his last gasp is happy in comparison."

"Pshaw ! it is nothing," said she ; "you are a child. Let us
see now; tell me about it."

"I am hopelessly in debt. I have come to the end of my
tether."

"Is that all?" said she, smiling at him. "Money matters
can always be arranged somehow or other; nothing is ir-
retrievable except disasters in love/''

Victurnien's mind being set at rest by this swift com-
prehension of his position, he unrolled the bright-colored
web of his life for the last two years and a half; but it was
the seamy side of it which he displayed with something of
genius, and still more of wit, to his Diane. He told his tale
with the inspiration of the moment, which fails no one in
great crises; he had sufficient artistic skill to set it off by a
varnish of delicate scorn for men and things. It was aD
aristocrat who spoke. And the Duchess listened as she could
listen.

One knee was raised, for she sat with her foot on a stool.
She rested her elbow on her knee and leant her face on hei
hand so that her fingers closed daintily over her shapely chin
Her eyes never left his ; but thoughts by myriads flitted under
the blue surface, like gleams of stormy light between twc
clouds. Her forehead was calm, her mouth gravely intent —
grave with love; her lips were knotted fast by Victurnien^
lips. To have her listening thus was to believe that a divine

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 23?

love flowed from her heart. Wherefore, when the Count had
proposed flight to this soul, so closely knit to his own, he could
not help crying, "You are an angel !"

The fair Maufrigneuse made silent answer; but she had
not spoken as yet.

"Good, very good," she said at last. (She had not given
herself up to the love expressed in her face; her mind had
been entirely absorbed by deep-laid schemes which she kept to
herself.) "But that is not the question, dear." (The
"angel" was only "that" by this time.) "Let us think of
your affairs. Yes, we will go, and the sooner the better. Ar-
range it all; I will follow you. It is glorious to leave Paris
and the world behind. I will set about my preparations in
such a way that no one can suspect anything."

/ will follow you! Just so Mile. Mars might have spoken
those words to send a thrill through two thousand listening
men and women. When a Duchesse de Maufrigneuse offers,
in such words, to make such a sacrifice to love, she has paid
her debt. How should Victurnien speak of sordid details
after that? He could so much the better hide his
schemes, because Diane was particularly careful not to in-
quire into them. She was now, and always, as de Marsay
said, an invited guest at a banquet wreathed with roses, a
banquet which mankind, as in duty bound, made ready for
her.

Victurnien would not go till the promise had been sealed.
He must draw courage from his happiness before he could
bring himself to do a deed on which, as he inwardly told
himself, people would be certain to put a bad construction.
Still (and this was the thought that decided him) he counted
on his aunt and father to hush up the affair ; he even counted
on Chesnel. Chesnel would think of one more compromise.
Besides, "this business," as he called it in his thoughts, was
the only way of raising money on the family estate. With
three hundred thousand francs, he and Diane would lead a
happy life hidden in some palace in Venice ; and there they
would forget the world. They went through their romance
in advance.

234 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Next day Victurnien made out a bill for three hundred
thousand francs, and took it to the Kellers. The Kellers
advanced the money, for du Croisier happened to have a
balance at the time; but they wrote to let him know that he
must not draw again on them without giving them notice.
Du Croisier, much astonished, asked for a statement of ac-
counts. It was sent. Everything was explained. The day
of his vengeance had arrived.

When Victurnien had drawn "his" money, he took it to
Mme. de Maufrigneuse. She locked up the banknotes in
her desk, and proposed to bid the world farewell by going to
the Opera to see it for the last time. Victurnien was
thoughtful, absent, and uneasy. He was beginning to reflect.
He thought that his seat in the Duchess' box might cost him
dear ; that perhaps, when he had put the three hundred thou- i
sand francs in safety, it would be better to travel post, to
fall at Chesnel's feet, and tell him all. But before they left j
the opera-house, the Duchess, in spite of herself, gave Vic- 1
turnien an adorable glance, her eyes were shining with the
desire to go back once more to bid farewell to the nest which
she loved so much. And boy that he was, he lost ai
night.

The next day, at three o'clock, he was back again at the
Hotel de Maufrigneuse ; he had come to take the Duchess'
orders for that night's escape. And, "Why should we go?"}
asked she; "I have thought it all out. The Vicomtesse del
Beauseant and the Duchesse de Langeais disappeared. If l|
go too, it will be something quite commonplace. We will
brave the storm. It will be a far finer thing to do. I am
sure of success." Victurnien's eyes dazzled; he felt as if hisi
skin were dissolving and the blood oozing out all over him.

"What is the matter with you?" cried the fair Diane, notic-j
ing a hesitation which a woman never forgives. Your truly
adroit lover will hasten to agree with any fancy that Woman!
may take into her head, and suggest reasons for doing other-
wise, while leaving her free exercise of her right to change!

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 235

her mind, her intentions, and sentiments generally as often as
she pleases. Victurnien was angry for the first time, angry
with the wrath of a weak man of poetic temperament ; it was
a storm of rain and lightning flashes, but no thunder fol-
lowed. The angel on whose faith he had risked more than
his life, the honor of his house, was very roughly handled.

"So," said she, "we have come to this after eighteen
months of tenderness! You are unkind, very unkind. Go
away ! — I do not want to see you again. I thought that you
loved me. You do not."

"1 do not love you?" repeated he, thunderstruck by the re-
proach.

"No, monsieur."

"And yet " he cried. "Ah! if you but knew what I

have just done for your sake !"

"And how have you done so much for me, monsieur? As
if a man ought not to do anything for a woman that has done
so much for him."

"You are not worthy to know it !" Victurnien cried in a
passion of anger.

"Oh!"

After that sublime "Oh!" Diane bowed her head on her
hand and sat, still, cold, and implacable as angels naturally
may be expected to do, seeing that they share none of the
passions of humanity. At the sight of the woman he loved
in this terrible attitude, Victurnien forgot his danger. Had
he not just that moment wronged the most angelic creature
on earth? He longed for forgiveness, he threw himself be-
fore her, he kissed her feet, he pleaded, he wept. Two whole
hours the unhappy young man spent in all kinds of follies,
only to meet the same cold face, while the great silent tears
dropping one by one, were dried as soon as they fell lest the
unworthy lover should try to wipe them away. The Duchess
was acting a great agony, one of those hours which stamp
the woman who passes through them as something august and
sacred.

Two more hours went by. By this time the Count had

236 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

gained possession of Diane's hand; it felt cold and spiritless.
The beautiful hand, with all the treasures in its grasp, might
have been supple wood; there was nothing of Diane in it;
he had taken it, it had not been given to him. As for Vic-
turnien, the spirit had ebbed out of his frame, he had ceased
to think. He would not have seen the sun in heaven. What
was to be done ? What course should he take ? What resolu-
tion should he make? The man who can keep his head in
such circumstances must be made of the same stuff as the
convict who spent the night in robbing the Bibliotheque Roy ale
of its gold medals, and repaired to his honest brother in the
morning with a request to melt down the plunder. "What is
to be done?" cried the brother. "Make me some coffee,"
replied the thief. Victurnien sank into a bewildered stupor,
darkness settled down over his brain. Visions of past
rapture flitted across the misty gloom like the figures that
Raphael painted against a black background; to these he
must bid farewell. Inexorable and disdainful, the Duchess
played with the tip of her scarf. She looked in irritation
at Victurnien from time to time; she coquetted with memo-
ries, she spoke to her lover of his rivals as if anger had finally
decided her to prefer one of them to a man who could so
change in one moment after twenty-eight months of love.

"Ah ! that charming young Felix de Vandenesse, so faith-
ful as he was to Mme. de Mortsauf, would never have per-
mitted himself such a scene! He can love, can de
Vandenesse ! De Marsay, that terrible de Marsay, such a tiger
as every one thought him, was rough with other men; but,
like all strong men, he kept his gentleness for women.
Montriveau trampled the Duchesse de Langeais under foot, as
Othello killed Desdemona, in a burst of fury which at any
rate proved the extravagance of his love. It was not like a
paltry squabble. There was rapture in being so crushed.
Little, fair-haired, slim, and slender men loved to torment
women; they could only reign over poor, weak creatures; it
pleased them to have some ground for believing that they
were men. The tyranny of love was their one chance of as-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 237

serting their power. She did not know why she had put herself
at the mercy of fair hair. Such men as de Marsay,
Montriveau, and Vandenesse, dark-haired and well grown,
had a ray of sunlight in their eyes."

It was a storm of epigrams. Her speeches, like bullets,
came hissing past his ears. Every word that Diane hurled at
him was triple-barbed; she humiliated, stung, and wounded
him with an art that was all her own, as half a score
of savages can torture an enemy bound to a stake.

"You are mad !" he cried at last, at the end of his patience,
and out he went in God knows what mood. He drove as if he
had never handled the reins before, locked his wheels in the
wheels of other vehicles, collided with the curbstone in the
Place Louis-Quinze, went he knew not whither. The horse,
left to its own devices, made a bolt for the stable along the
Quai d'Orsay; but as he turned into the Hue de TOniversite,
Josephin appeared to stop the runaway.

"You cannot go home, sir," the old man said, with a scared
face; "they have come with a warrant to arrest you/'

Victurnien thought that he had been arrested on the
criminal charge, albeit there had not been time for the
public prosecutor to receive his instructions. He had for-
gotten the matter of the bills of exchange, which had been
stirred up again for some days past in the form of orders to
pay, brought by the officers of the court with accompaniments
in the shape of bailiffs, men in possession, magistrates, com-
missaries, policemen, and other representatives of social order.
Like most guilty creatures, Victurnien had forgotten every-
thing but his crime.

"It is all over with me," he cried.

"No, M. le Comte, drive as fast as you can to the Hotel
du Bon la Fontaine, in the Eue de Grenelle. Mile. Armande
is waiting there for you, the horses have been put in, she will
take you with her."

Victurnien, in his trouble, caught like a drowning man at
the branch that came to his hand; he rushed off to the inn,
reached the place, and flung his arms about his aunt. Mile.-

238 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Armande cried as if her heart would break; any one might
have thought that she had a share in her nephew's guilt.
They stepped into the carriage. A few minutes later they
were on the road to Brest, and Paris lay behind them. Vic-
turnien uttered not a sound; he was paralyzed. And when
aunt and nephew began to speak, they talked at cross pur-
poses; Victurnien, still laboring under the unlucky misap-
prehension which flung him into Mile. Armande's arms, was
thinking of his forgery; his aunt had the debts and the bills
on her mind.

"You know all, aunt," he had said.

"Poor boy, yes, but we are here. I am not going to scold
you just yet. Take heart."

"I must hide somewhere."

"Perhaps. . . . Yes, it is a very good idea."

"Perhaps I might get into ChesnePs house without being
seen if we timed ourselves to arrive in the middle of the
night?"

"That will be best. We shall be better able to hide this
from my brother. — Poor angel! how unhappy he is!" said
she, petting the unworthy child.

"Ah ! now I begin to know what dishonor means ; it has
chilled my love."

"Unhappy boy ; what bliss and what misery !" And Mile.
Armande drew his fevered face to her breast and kissed his
forehead, cold and damp though it was, as the holy women
might have kissed the brow of the dead Christ when they laid
Him in His grave clothes. Following out the excellent
scheme suggested by the prodigal son, he was brought by
night to the quiet house in the Eue du Bercail; but chance
ordered it that by so doing he ran straight into the wolf's
jaws, as the saying goes. That evening Chesnel had been
making arrangements to sell his connection to M. Lepres-
soir's head-clerk. M. Lepressoir was the notary employed by
the Liberals, just as ChesnePs practice lay among the aristo-
cratic families. The young fellow's relatives were rich
enough to pay Chesnel the considerable sum of a hundred
thousand francs in cash.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 239

Chesnel was rubbing his hands. "A hundred thousand
francs will go a long way in buying up debts," he thought.
"The young man is paying a high rate of interest on his
loans. We will lock him up down here. I will go yonder
myself and bring those curs to terms."

Chesnel, honest Chesnel, upright, worthy Chesnel, called
his darling Comte Victurnien's creditors "curs."

Meanwhile his successor was making his way along the Rue
du Bercail just as Mile. Armande's traveling carriage turned
into it. Any young man might be expected to feel some
curiosity if he saw a traveling carriage stop at a notary's door
in such a town and at such an hour of the night ; the young
man in question was sufficiently inquisitive to stand in a
doorway and watch. He saw Mile. Armande alight.

"Mile. Armande d'Esgrignon at this time of night !" said
he to himself. "What can be going forward at the d'Esgri-
gnon s'?"

At the sight of mademoiselle, Chesnel opened the door
circumspectly and set down the light which he was carrying ;
but when he looked out and saw Victurnien, Mile. Armande's
first whispered word made the whole thing plain to him. He
looked up and down the street; it seemed quite deserted; he
beckoned, and the young Count sprang out of the carriage
and entered the courtyard. All was lost. Chesnel's suc-
cessor had discovered Victurnien's hiding-place.

Victurnien was hurried into the house and installed in a
room beyond Chesnel's private office. No one could enter it
except across the old man's dead body.

"Ah ! M. le Comte !" exclaimed Chesnel, notary no longer.

"Yes, monsieur," the Count answered, understanding his
old friend's exclamation. "I did not listen to you; and now
I have fallen into the depths, and I must perish."

"No, no," the good man answered, looking triumphantly
from Mile. Armande to the Count. "I have sold my connec-
tion. I have been working for a very long time now, and am
thinking of retiring. By noon to-morrow I shall have a
hundred thousand francs; many things can be settled with

VOL. 7 — 3^

240 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

that. Mademoiselle, you are tired/' he added; "go back to
the carriage and go home and sleep. Business to-mor-
row."

"Is he safe ?" returned she, looking at Victurnien.

"Yes."

She kissed her nephew; a few tears fell on his forehead.
Then she went.

"My good Chesnel," said the Count, when they began to
talk of business, "what are your hundred thousand francs in
such a position as mine ? You do not know the full extent of
my troubles, I think."

Victurnien explained the situation. Chesnel was thunder-
struck. But for the strength of his devotion, he would have
succumbed to this blow. Tears streamed from the eyes that
might well have had no tears left to shed. For a few
moments he was a child again, for a few moments he was
bereft of his senses ; he stood like a man who should find his
own house on fire, and through a window see the cradle ablaze
and hear the hiss of the flames on his children's curls. He
rose to his full height — il se dressa en pied, as Amyot would
have said; he seemed to grow taller; he raised his withered
hands and wrung them despairingly and wildly.

"If only your father may die and never know this, young
man! To be a forger is enough; a parricide you must not
be. Fly, you say? No. They would condemn you for con-
tempt of court! Oh, wretched boy! Why did you not
forge my signature ? I would have paid ; I should not have
taken the bill to the public prosecutor. — Now I can do noth-
ing. You have brought me to a stand in the lowest pit in

hell ! Du Croisier ! What will come of it ? What is to be

done ? — If you had killed a man, there might be some help for
it. But forgery — forgery! And time — the time is flying,"
he went on, shaking his fist towards the old clock. "You
will want a sham passport now. One crime leads to another.
First," he added, after a pause, "first of all we must save
the house of d'Esgrignon."

"But the money is still in Mme. de Maufrigneuse's keep-
ing," exclaimed Victurnien.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN fc4i

"Ah !" exclaimed Chesnel. ffWell, there is some hope left
— a faint hope. Could we soften du Croisier, I wonder, or buy
him over? He shall have all the lands if he likes. I will
go to him; I will wake him and offer him all we have. — Be-
sides, it was not you who forged that bill; it was I. I will
go to jail ; I am too old for the hulks, they can only put me
in prison."

"But the body of the bill is in my handwriting," objected
Victurnien, without a sign of surprise at this reckless
devotion.

"Idiot ! . . . that is, pardon, M. le Comte. Josephin
should have been made to write it," the old notary cried
wrathf ully. "He is a good creature ; he would have taken it
all on his shoulders. But there is an end of it ; the world is
falling to pieces," the old man continued, sinking exhausted
into a chair. "Du Croisier is a tiger ; we must be careful not
to rouse him. What time is it ? Where is the draft ? If it
is at Paris, it might be bought back from the Kellers; they
might accommodate us. Ah! but there are dangers on all
sides; a single false step means ruin. Money is wanted in
any case. But, there ! nobody knows you are here, you must
live buried away in the cellar if needs must. I will go at
once to Paris as fast as I can; I can hear the mail coach
from Brest."

In a moment the old man recovered the faculties of his
youth — his agility and vigor. He packed up clothes for the
journey, took money, brought a six-pound loaf to the little
room beyond the office, and turned the key on his child by
adoption.

"Not a sound in here," he said, "no light at night; and
stop here till I come back, or you will go to the hulks. Do
you understand, M. le Comte? Yes, to the hulks! if any-
body in a town like this knows that you are here."

With that Chesnel went out, first telling his housekeeper
to give out that he was ill, to allow no one to come into the
house, to send everybody away, and to postpone business of
every kind for three days. He wheedled the manager of

242 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWtf

the coach-office, made up a tale for his benefit — he had the
makings of an ingenious novelist in him — and obtained a
promise that if there should be a place, he should have it, pass-
port or no passport, as well as a further promise to keep the
hurried departure a secret. Luckily, the coach was empty
when it arrived.

In the middle of the following night Chesnel was set down
in Paris. At nine o'clock in the morning he waited on the
Kellers, and learned that the fatal draft had returned to du
Croisier three days since; but while obtaining this informa-
tion, he in no way committed himself. Before he went away
he inquired whether the draft could be recovered if the
amount were refunded. Francois Keller's answer was to the
effect that the document was du Croisier's property, and that
it was entirely in his power to keep or return it. Then, in
desperation, the old man went to the Duchess.

Mme. de Maufrigneuse was not at home to any visitor at
that hour. Chesnel, feeling that every moment was precious,
sat down in the hall, wrote a few lines, and succeeded in
sending them to the lady by dint of wheedling, fascinating,
bribing, and commanding the most insolent and inaccessible
servants in the world. The Duchess was still in bed ; but, to
the great astonishment of her household, the old man in
black knee-breeches, ribbed stockings, and shoes with buckles
to them, was shown into her room.

"What is it, monsieur?" she asked, posing in her dis-
order. "What does he want of me, ungrateful that he is?"

"It is this, Mme. la Duchesse," the good man exclaimed,
"you have a hundred thousand crowns belonging to us."

"Yes," began she. "What does it signify ?"

"The money was gained by a forgery, for which we are
going to the hulks, a forgery which we committed for
-love of you," Chesnel said quickly. "How is it that you did
not guess it, so clever as you are? Instead of scolding the
boy, you ought to have had the truth out of him, and stopped
him while there was time, and saved him."

At the first words the Duchess understood ; she felt ashamed

342

for his benefit — he ha
t in him — and obtained
. he should have it, paw
ther promise to ke<
, the coach was ■

ht Chesncl was set dow
morning he Waii
i ! draft had returned
iie obtaining this ini'
-elf. Before he weni
could be recovered if th

ter's answer w
foisier's property
keep or return it. T
the Duchess.

t at home to any visitor I
moment \v

"What is it, Monsieur kn*foe ftSfcierf.
her disorder int of wh

Insolent and
till in 1
hold, the oil
and shoes with bi

Ing in h
ungrateful that he
ood man exclaimet
ro

'gnify —

ery, for which we st
which we committed fc
y. "How
re? Instead oi
nth out of him, ai.
mr
>d; she felt ashame

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 243

}f her behavior to so impassioned a lover, and afraid besides
that she might be suspected of complicity. In her wish to
orove that she had not touched the money left in her keeping,
she lost all regard for appearances; and besides, it did not
:>ccur to her that a notary was a man. She flung off the
Bider-down quilt, sprang to her desk (flitting past the lawyer
ike an angel out of one the vignettes which illustrate Lamar-
;ine's books), held out the notes, and went back in confusion
;o bed.

1 "You are an angel, madame." ( She was to be an angel for
ill the world, it seemed.) "But this will not be the end of it.
C count upon your influence to save us."

"To save you! I will do it or die! Love that will not
shrink from a crime must be love indeed. Is there a woman in
:he world for whom such a thing has been done ? Poor boy !
3ome, do not lose time, dear M. Chesnel ; and count upon me
is upon yourself."

; "Mme. la Duchesse ! Mme. la Duchesse !" It was all that
le could say, so overcome was he. He cried, he could have
lanced; but he was afaid of losing his senses, and re-
'rained.

i "Between us, we will save him," she said, as he left
he room.

Chesnel went straight to Josephin. Josephin unlocked the
roung Count's desk and writing-table. Very luckily, the notary
.bund letters which might be useful, letters from du Croisier
,nd the Kellers. Then he took a place in a diligence which
ras just about to start ; and by dint of fees to the postilions,
he lumbering vehicle went as quickly as the coach. His two
'ellow-passengers on the journey happened to be in as great a
mrry as himself, and readily agreed to take their meals
n the carriage. Thus swept over the road, the notary
eached the Eue du Bercail, after three days of absence, an
iour before midnight. And yet he was too late. He saw
he gendarmes at the gate, crossed the threshold, and met the
oung Count in the courtyard. Victurnien had been ar-
ested. If Chesnel had had the power, he would beyond a

244 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

doubt have killed the officers and men ; as it was, he could only
fall on Victurnien's neck.

"If I cannot hush this matter up, you must kill yourself
before the indictment is made out," he whispered. But Vic-
turnien had sunk into such stupor, that he stared back un-
comprehendingly.

"Kill myself ?" he repeated.

"Yes. If your courage should fail, my boy, count upon
me/' said Chesnel, squeezing Victurnien's hand.

In spite of his anguish of mind and tottering limbs, he
stood firmly planted, to watch the son of his heart, the Comte
d'Esgrignon, go out of the courtyard between two gendarmes,
with the commissary, the justice of the peace, and the clerk
of the court; and not until the figures had disappeared, and
the sound of footsteps had died away into silence, did he re-
cover his firmness and presence of mind.

"You will catch cold, sir," Brigitte remonstrated.

"The devil take you !" cried her exasperated master.

Never in the nine-and-twenty years that Brigitte had been
in his service had she heard such words from him! Her
candle fell out of her hands, but Chesnel neither heeded his
housekeeper's alarm nor heard her exclaim. He hurried off
towards the Val-Noble.

"He is out of his mind," said she ; "after all, it is no won-
der. But where is he off to? I cannot possibly go after
him. What will become of him? Suppose that he should
drown himself?"

And Brigitte went to waken the head-clerk and send him to
look along the river bank ; the river had a gloomy reputation
just then, for there had lately been two cases of suicide
— one a young man full of promise, and the other a girl, a
victim of seduction. Chesnel went straight to the Hotel du
Croisier. There lay his only hope. The law requires that
a charge of forgery must be brought by a private individual.
It was still possible to withdraw if du Croisier chose to admit
that there had been a misapprehension; and Chesnel had
hopes, even then, of buying the man over.

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 245

M. and Mme. du Croisier had much more company than
usual that evening. Only a few persons were in the secret.
M. du Eonceret, president of the Tribunal; M. Sauvager,
deputy Public Prosecutor ; and M. du Coudrai, a registrar of
mortgages, who had lost his post by voting on the wrong
|side, were the only persons who were supposed to know about
it; but Mesdames du Eonceret and du Coudrai had told the
news, in strict confidence, to one or two intimate friends, so
that it had spread half over the semi-noble, semi-bourgeois
[assembly at M. du Croisier's. Everybody felt the gravity of
the situation, but no one ventured to speak of it openly ; and,
moreover, Mme. du Croisier's attachment to the upper sphere
was so well known, that people scarcely dared to mention the
disaster which had befallen the d'Esgrignons or to ask for
particulars. The persons most interested were waiting till
good Mme. du Croisier retired, for that lady always re-
treated to her room at the same hour to perform her religious
bxercises as far as possible out of her husband's sight.

Du Croisier's adherents, knowing the secret and the plans
)f the great commercial power, looked round when the lady of
,'he house disappeared; but there were still several persons
'present whose opinions or interests marked them out as un-
;rustworthy, so they continued to play. About half past
?leven all had gone save intimates : M. Sauvager, M. Camusot,
the examining magistrate, and his wife, M. and Mme. du Eon-
beret and their son Fabien, M. and Mme. du Coudrai, and
Joseph Blondet, the eldest son of an old judge ; ten persons in
ill.

It is told of Talleyrand that one fatal day, three hours
ifter midnight, he suddenly interrupted a game of cards in
;he Duchesse de Luynes' house by laying down his watch on
;he table and asking the players whether the Prince de Conde
lad any child but the Due d'Enghien.

"Why do you ask ?" returned Mme. de Luynes, "when you
enow so well that he has not."

"Because if the Prince has no other son, the House of
3onde is now at an end."
There was a moment's pause, and they finished the game.

246 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

— President du Eonceret now did something very similar
Perhaps he had heard the anecdote ; perhaps, in political life,
little minds and great minds are apt to hit upon the same
expression. He looked at his watch, and interrupted the
game of boston with :

"At this moment M. le Comte d'Esgrignon is arrested, and
that house which has held its head so high is dishonored for-
ever."

"Then, have you got hold of the boy?" du Coudrai cried
gleefully.

Every one in the room, with the exception of the President, [j
the deputy, and du Croisier, looked startled.

"He has just been arrested in Chesnel's house, where he
was hiding," said the deputy public prosecutor, with the air
of a capable but unappreciated public servant, who ought by
rights to be Minister of Police. M. Sauvager, the deputy,
was a thin, tall young man of five-and-twenty, with a lengthy
olive-hued countenance, black frizzled hair, and deep-set eyes ;
the wide, dark rings beneath them were completed by the
wrinkled purple eyelids above. With a nose like the beak of
some bird of prey, a pinched mouth, and cheeks worn lean
with study and hollowed by ambition, he was the very type
of a second-rate personage on the lookout for something to
turn up, and ready to do anything if so he might get on in the
world, while keeping within the limitations of the possible
and the forms of law. His pompous expression was an ad-
mirable indication of the time-serving eloquence to be ex-
pected of him. Chesnel's successor had discovered the young
Count's hiding place to him, and he took great credit to him-
self for his penetration.

The news seemed to come as a shock to the examining
magistrate, M. Camusot, who had granted the warrant of ar-
rest on Sauvager's application, with no idea that it was to be
executed so promptly. Camusot was short, fair, and fat al-
ready, though he was only thirty years old or thereabouts;
he had the flabby, livid look peculiar to officials who
live shut up in their private study cr in a court of justice;

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 247

and his little, pale, yellow eyes were full of the suspicion
which is often mistaken for shrewdness.

Mme. Camusot looked at her spouse, as who should say,
"Was I not right ?"

"Then the case will come on," was Camusot's comment.

"Could you doubt it.?" asked du Coudrai. "Now they
have got the Count, all is over."

"There is the jury," said Camusot. "In this case M. le
' Prefet is sure to take care that after the challenges from
the prosecution and the defence, the jury to a man will be for
an acquittal. — My advice would be to come to a compromise,"
he added, turning to du Croisier.

"Compromise!" echoed the President; "why, he is in the
hands of justice."

"Acquitted or convicted, the Comte d'Esgrignon will be
dishonored all the same," put in Sauvager.

"I am bringing an action,"* said du Croisier. "I shall
have Dupin senior. We shall see how the d'Esgrignon family
will escape out of his clutches."

"The d'Esgrignons will defend the case and have counsel
I from Paris; they will have Berryer," said Mme. Camusot.
"You will have a Poland for your Oliver."

Du Croisier, M. Sauvager, and the President du Ronceret
looked at Camusot, and one thought troubled their minds.
, The lady's tone, the way in which she flung her proverb in
the faces of the eight conspirators against the house of
d'Esgrignon, caused them inward perturbation, which they
dissembled as provincials can dissemble, by dint of lifelong
practice in the shifts of a monastic existence. Little Mme.
Camusot saw their change of countenance and subsequent
composure when they scented opposition on the part of the
examining magistrate. When her husband unveiled the
thoughts in the back of his own mind, she had tried to plumb
the depths of hate in du Croisier's adherents. She wanted
to find out how du Croisier had gained over this deputy public

* A trial for an offence of this kind in France is an action brought by a private
person (partie civile) to recover damages, and at the same time a 'criminal prosecu-
tion conducted on behalf of the Government.— Tr.

248 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

prosecutor, who had acted so promptly and so directly in
opposition to the views of the central power.

"In any case," continued she, "if celebrated counsel come
down from Paris, there is a prospect of a very interesting
session in the Court of Assize ; but the matter will be snuffed
out between the Tribunal and the Court of Appeal. It is
only to be expected that the Government should do all that]
can be done, below the surface, to save a young man who I
comes of a great family, and has the Duchesse de Maufri-
gneuse for friend. So I think that we shall have a 'sen-
sation at Landernau.' "

"How you go on, madame!" the President said sternly
"Can you suppose that the Court of First Instance will be
influenced by considerations which have nothing to do witfc
justice ?"

"The event proves the contrary," she said meaningly, look-
ing full at Sauvager and the President, who glanced coldly ai
her.

"Explain yourself, madame," said Sauvager. "You speal
as if we had not done our duty."

"Mme. Camusot meant nothing," interposed her husband.

"But has not M. le President just said something prejudic
ing a case which depends on the examination of the prisoner V
said she. "And the evidence is still to be taken, and th«
Court has not given its decision ?"

"We are not at the law-courts," the deputy public prosecu
tor replied tartly ; "and besides, we know all that."

"But the public prosecutor knows nothing at all about
yet," returned she, with an ironical glance. "He will com
back from the Chamber of Deputies in all haste. You hav
cut out his work for him, and he, no doubt, will speak for him
self."

The deputy prosecutor knitted his thick bushy brows
Those interested read tardy scruples in his countenance,
great silence followed, broken by no sound but the dealing o
the cards. M. and Mme. Camusot, sensible of a decided chil
in the atmosphere, took their departure to leave the conspi]
tors to talk at their ease.

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 249

"Camusot," the lady began in the street, "you went too
far. Why lead those people to suspect that you will have no
part in their schemes? They will play you some ugly
trick."

"What can they do? I am the only examining magis-
trate."

"Cannot they slander you in whispers, and procure your
dismissal ?"

At that very moment Chesnel ran up against the couple.
The old notary recognized the examining magistrate; and
with the lucidity which comes of an experience of business, he
saw that the fate of the d'Esgrignons lay in the hands of
the young man before him.

"Ah, sir!" he exclaimed, "we shall soon need you badly.
Just a word with you. — Your pardon, madame," he added,
as he drew Camusot aside.

Mme. Camusot, as a good conspirator, looked towards du
Croisier's house, ready to break up the conversation if any-
body appeared; but she thought, and thought rightly, that
their enemies were busy discussing this unexpected turn which
she had given to the affair. Chesnel meanwhile drew the
magistrate into a dark corner under the wall, and lowered his
voice for his companion's ear.

"If you are for the house of d'Esgrignon," he said, "Mme.
la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, the Prince de Cadignan, the
Dues de Navarreins and de Lenoncourt, the Keeper of the
Seals, the Chancellor, the King himself, will interest them-
selves in you. I have just come from Paris ; I knew all about
this; I went post-haste to explain everything at Court. We
are counting on you, and I will keep your secret. If you are
hostile, I shall go back to Paris to-morrow and lodge a com-
plaint with the Keeper of the Seals that there is a suspicion
of corruption. Several functionaries were at du Croisier's
house to-night, and no doubt, ate and drank there, contrary
to law ; and besides, they are friends of his."

Chesnel would have brought the Almighty to intervene if
he had had the power. He did not wait for an answer ; he left

250 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Camusot and fled like a deer towards du Croisier's housu.
Camusot, meanwhile, bidden to reveal the notary's con- j
fidences, was at once assailed with, ''Was I not right, dear?''
— a wifely formula used on all occasions, but rather more
vehemently when the fair speaker is in the wrong. By the
time they reached home, Camusot had admitted the ,
superiority of his partner in life, and appreciated his good
fortune in belonging to her ; which confession, doubtless, was
the prelude of a blissful night.

Chesnel met his foes in a body as they left du Croisier's
house, and began to fear that du Croisier had gone to bed.
In his position he was compelled to act quickly, and any de- [
lay was a misfortune.

"In the King's name !" he cried, as the man-servant was I
closing the hall door. He had just brought the King on the |
scene for the benefit of an ambitious little official, and the;
word was still on his lips. He fretted and chafed while the!
door was unbarred ; then, swift as a thunderbolt, dashed into |
the ante-chamber, and spoke to the servant

"A hundred crowns to you, young man, if you can wakej
Mme. du Croisier and send her to me this instant. TV'l heri
anything you like."

Chesnel grew cool and composed as he opened the door
of the brightly lighted drawing-room, where du Croisier was!
striding up and down. For a moment the two men scanned!
each other, with hatred and enmity, twenty years' deep, in I
their eyes. One of the two had his foot on the heart of the!
house of d'Esgrignon; the other, with a lion's strength, came{
forward to pluck it away.

"Your humble servant, sir," said Chesnel. "Have you
made the charge ?"

"Yes, sir."

"When was it made?"

"Yesterday."

"Have any steps been taken since the warrant of arrest was I
issued?"

"I believe so."

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 251

"I have come to treat with you."

"Justice must take its course, nothing can stop it, the ar-
rest has been made."

"Never mind that, I am at your orders, at your feet." The
old man knelt before du Croisier, and stretched out his hands
entreatingly.

"What do you want? Our lands, our castle? Take all;
withdraw the charge; leave us nothing but life and honor.
And over and besides all this, I will be your servant; com-
mand and I will obey."

Du Croisier sat down in an easy-chair and left the old man
to kneel.

"You are not vindictive," pleaded Chesnel; "you are good-
hearted, you do not bear us such a grudge that you will not
lister, to terms. Before daylight the young man ought to be
at liberty."

"The whole town knows that he has been arrested," re-
turned du Croisier, enjoying his revenge.

"it is a great misfortune, but as there will neither be proofs
nor trial, we can easily manage that."

Du Croisier reflected. He seemed to be struggling with
self-interest; Chesnel thought that he had gained a hold on
his enemy through the great motive of human action. At
that supreme moment Mme. du Croisier appeared.

"Come here and help me to soften your dear husband,
madame ?" said Chesnel, still on his knees. Mme. du Croisier
made him rise with every sign of profound astonishment.
Chesnel explained his errand; and when she knew it, the
generous daughter of the intendants of the Dues de Alencon
turned to du Croisier with tears in her eyes.

"Ah ! monsieur, can you hesitate ? The d'Esgrignons, the
honor of the province !" she said.

"There is more in it than that," exclaimed du Croisier, ris-
ing to begin his restless walk again.

"More ? What more ?" asked Chesnel in amazement.

"France is involved, M. Chesnel ! It is a question of the
country, of the people, of giving my lords your nobles a

252 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

lesson, and teaching them that there is such a thing as justice,
and law, and a bourgeoisie — a lesser nobility as good as they,
and a match for them ! There shall be no more trampling
down half a score of wheat fields for a single hare ; no bring-
ing shame on families by seducing unprotected girls ; they
shall not look down on others as good as they are, and mock
at them for ten whole years, without finding out at last that
these things swell into avalanches, and those avalanches will
fall and crush and bury my lords the nobles. You want to
go back to the old order of things. You want to tear up the
social compact, the Charter in which our rights are set
forth "

"And so?"

"Is it not a sacred mission to open the people's eyes ?" cried !
du Croisier. "Their eyes will be opened to the morality of
your party when they see nobles going to be tried at the As-
size Court like Pierre and Jacques. They will say, then, that i
small folk who keep their self-respect are as good as great j
folk that bring shame on themselves. The Assize Court is a I
light for all the world. Here, I am the champion of thei
people, the friend of law. You yourselves twice flung me on
the side of the people — once when you refused an alliance,
twice when you put me under the ban of your society. You
are reaping as you have sown."

If Chesnel was startled by this outburst, so no less was
Mine, du Croisier. To her this was a terrible revelation of
her husband's character, a new light not merely on the past
but on the future as well. Any capitulation on the part of
the colossus was apparently out of the question; but Chesnel
in no wise retreated before the impossible.

"What, monsieur?" said Mme. du Croisier. "Would you
not forgive? Then you are not a Christian."

"I forgive as God forgives, madame, on certain condi-
tions."

"And what are they ?" asked Chesnel, thinking that he saw
a ray of hope.

"The elections are coming on ; I want the votes at your dis-

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 253

"You shall have them/'

"I wish that we, my wife and I, should be received
familiarly every evening, with an appearance of friendliness
at any rate, my M. le Marquis d'Esgrignon and his circle,"
continued du Croisier.

"I do not know how we are going to compass it, but you
shall be received."

"I wish to have the family bound over by a surety of four
hundred thousand francs, and by a written document stating
the nature of the compromise, so as to keep a loaded cannon
pointed at its heart."

"We agree," said Chesnel, without admitting that the three
hundred thousand francs was in his possession; "but the
amount must be deposited with a third party and returned
to the family after your election and repayment."

"No; after the marriage of my grand-niece, Mile. Duval.
She will very likely have four million francs some day; the
reversion of our property (mine and my wife's) shall be
settled upon her by her marriage-contract, and you shall ar-
range a match between her and the young Count."

"Never!"

"Never!" repeated du Croisier, quite intoxicated with
triumph. "Good-night !"

"Idiot that I am," thought Chesnel, "why did I shrink from
a lie to such a man?"

Du Croisier took himself off ; he was pleased with himself ;
he had enjoyed ChesnePs humiliation; he had held the
destinies of a proud house, the representatives of the aristoc-
racy of the province, suspended in his hand; he had set the
print of his heel on the very heart of the d'Esgrignons ; and,
finally, he had broken off the whole negotiation on the score
of his wounded pride. He went up to his room, leaving his
wife alone with Chesnel. In his intoxication, he saw his
victory clear before him. He firmly believed that the three
hundred thousand francs had been squandered; the d'Esgri-
gnons must sell or mortgage all that they had to raise the
money ; the Assize Court was inevitable to his mind. .

254 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

An affair of forgery can always be settled out of court m
France if the missing amount is returned. The losers by
the crime are usually well-to-do, and have no wish to blight
an imprudent man's character. But du Croisier had no
mind to slacken his hold until he knew what he was about.
He meditated until he fell asleep on the magnificent manner
in which his hopes would be fulfilled by way of the Assize
Court or by marriage. The murmur of voices below, the
lamentations of Chesnel and Mme. du Croisier, sounded
sweet in his ears.

Mme. du Croisier shared Chesnel's views of the d'Esgri-
gnons. She was a deeply religious woman, a Koyalist at-
tached to the noblesse ; the interview had been in every way a
cruel shock to her feelings. She, a staunch Royalist, had
heard the roaring of that Liberalism, which, in her director's
opinion, wished to crush the Church. The Left benches for
her meant the popular upheaval and the scaffolds of 1793.

"What would your uncle, that sainted man who hears us,
say to this ?" exclaimed Chesnel. Mme. du Croisier made no
reply, but the great tears rolled down her cheeks.

"You have already been the cause of one poor boy's death;
his mother will go mourning all her days," continued Chesnel;
he saw how his words told, but he would have struck harder
and even broken this woman's heart to save Victurnien.
"Do you want to kill Mile. Armande,for she would not survive
the dishonor of the house for a week ? Do you wish to be the
death of poor Chesnel, your old notary ? For I shall kill the
Count in prison before they shall bring the charge against
him, and take my own life afterwards, before they shall try
me for murder in an Assize Court."

"That is enough ! that is enough, my friend ! I would do
anything to put a stop to such an affair; but I never knew
M. du Croisier's real character until a few minutes ago. To
you I can make the admission : there is nothing to be done."

"But what if there is ?"

"I would give half the blood in my veins that it were so,"
said she, finishing her sentence by a wistful shake of the head.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 255

As the First Consul, beaten on the field of Marengo till
five o'clock in the evening, by six o'clock saw the tide of battle
turned by Desaix's desperate attack and Kellermann's terrific
charge, so Chesnel in the midst of defeat saw the beginnings
of victory. No one but a Chesnel, an old notary, an ex-
steward of the manor, old Maitre Sorbier's junior clerk, in
the sudden flash of lucidity which comes with despair, could
rise thus, high as a Napoleon, nay, higher. This was not
Marengo, it was Waterloo, and the Prussians had come up;
Chesnel saw this, and was determined to beat them off the
field.

"Madame," he said, "remember that I have been your man
of business for twenty years; remember that if the d'Esgri-
gnons mean the honor of the province, you represent the
honor of the bourgeoisie ; it rests with you, and you alone, to
save the ancient house. Now, answer me; are you going to
allow dishonor to fall on the shade of your dead uncle, on the
d'Esgrignons, on poor Chesnel? Do you want to kill Mile.
Armande weeping yonder ? Or do you wish to expiate wrongs
done to others by a deed which will rejoice your ancestors,
the intendants of the dukes of Alengon, and bring comfort
to the soul of our dear Abbe? If he could rise from his
grave, he would command you to do this thing that I beg of
you upon my knees."

"What is it ?" asked Mme. du Croisier.

"Well. Here are the hundred thousand crowns," said
Chesnel, drawing the bundles of notes from his pocket. "Take
them, and there will be an end of it."

"If that is all," she began, "and if no harm can come of it
to my husband "

"Nothing but good," Chesnel replied. "You are saving
him from eternal punishment in hell, at the cost of a slight
disappointment here below."

"He will not be compromised, will he ?" she asked, looking
into Chesnel's face.

Then Chesnel read the depths of the poor wife's mind,

Mme. du Croisier was hesitating between her two creeds ; be-
vol. 7—39

256 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

tween wifely obedience to her husband as laid down by the
Church, and obedience to the altar and the throne. Her
husband, in her eyes, was acting wrongly, but she dared not
blame him; she would fain save the d'Esgrignons, but she
was loyal to her husband's interests.

"Not in the least," Chesnel answered; "your old notary
swears it by the Holy Gospels "

He had nothing left to lose for the d'Esgrignons but his
soul; he risked it now by this horrible perjury, but Mme.
du Croisier must be deceived, there was no other choice but
death. Without losing a moment, he dictated a form of
receipt by which Mme. du Croisier acknowledged payment of
a hundred thousand crowns five days before the fatal letter
of exchange appeared ; for he recollected that du Croisier was
away from home, superintending improvements on his wife's
property at the time.

"Now swear to me that you will declare before the ex-
amining magistrate that you received the money on that
date," he said, when Mme. du Croisier had taken the notes and
he held the receipt in his hand.

"It will be a lie, will it not?"

"Venial sin/' said Chesnel.

"I could not do it without consulting my director, M.
l'Abbe Couturier."

"Very well," said Chesnel, "will you be guided entirely by
his advice in this affair?"

"I promise that."

"And you must not give the money to M. du Croisier until
you have been before the magistrate."

"No. Ah ! God give me strength to appear in a Court of
Justice and maintain a lie before men !"

Chesnel kissed Mme. du Croisier's hand, then stood up-
right, and majestic as one of the prophets that Eaphael paint-
ed in the Vatican.

"Your uncle's soul is thrilled with joy," he said ; "you have
wiped out for ever the wrong that you did by marrying an
enemy of altar and throne" — words that made a lively impres'
gion on Mme. du Croisier's timorous mind.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 25?

Then Chesnel all at once bethought himself that he must
make sure of the lady's director, the Abbe Couturier. He
knew how obstinately devout souls can work for the triumph
of their views when once they come forward for their side, and
wished to secure the concurrence of the Church as early as
possible. So he went to the Hotel d'Esgrignon, roused up
Mile. Armande, gave her an account of that night's work, and
sped her to fetch the Bishop himself into the forefront of the
battle.

"Ah, God in heaven ! Thou must save the house of d'Esgri-
gnon!" he exclaimed, as he went slowly home again. "The
affair is developing now into a fight in a Court of Law. We
are face to face with men that have passions and interests
of their own; we can get anything out of them. This du
Croisier has taken advantage of the public prosecutor's
absence; the public prosecutor is devoted to us, but since the
opening of the Chambers he has gone to Paris. Now, what
can they have done to get round his deputy ? They have in-
duced him to take up the charge without consulting his chief.
This mystery must be looked into, and the ground surveyed
to-morrow; and then, perhaps, when I have unraveled this
web of theirs, I will go back to Paris to set great powers at
work through Mme. de Maufrigneuse."

So he reasoned, poor, aged, clear-sighted wrestler, before
he lay down half dead with bearing the weight of so much
emotion and fatigue. And yet, before he fell asleep he ran
a searching eye over the list of magistrates, taking all their
secret ambitions into account, casting about for ways of in-
fluencing them, calculating his chances in the coming
struggle. Chesnel's prolonged scrutiny of consciences, given
in a condensed form, will perhaps serve as a picture of the
judicial world in a country town.

Magistrates and officials generally are obliged to begin their
career in the provinces; judicial ambition there ferments.
At the outset every man looks towards Paris ; they all aspire
to shine in the vast theatre where great political causes come
before the courts, and the higher branches of the legal pro-

25S THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

fession are closely connected with the palpitating interests of
society. But few are called to that paradise of the man of
law, and nine-tenths of the profession are bound sooner or
later to regard themselves as shelved for good in the prov-
inces. Wherefore, every Tribunal of First Instance and
every Court-Eoyal is sharply divided in two. The first sec-
tion has given up hope, and is either torpid or content ; con-
tent with the excessive respect paid to office in a country town,
or torpid with tranquillity. The second section is made up of
the younger sort, in whom the desire of success is untempered
as yet by disappointment, and of the really clever men urged
on continually by ambition as with a goad; and these two
are possessed with a sort of fanatical belief in their order.

At this time the younger men were full of Eoyalist zeal
against the enemies of the Bourbons. The most insignificant
deputy official was dreaming of conducting a prosecution, and
praying with all his might for one of those political cases
which bring a man's zeal into prominence, draw the attention
of the higher powers, and mean advancement for King's men.
Was there a member of an official staff of prosecuting counsel
who could hear of a Bonapartist conspiracy breaking out
somewhere else without a feeling of envy? Where was the
man that did not burn to discover a Caron, or a Berton, or a
revolt of some sort? With reasons of State, and the ne-
cessity of diffusing the monarchical spirit throughout France
as their basis, and a fierce ambition stirred up whenever party
spirit ran high, these ardent politicians on their promotion
were lucid, clear-sighted, and perspicacious. They kept up a
vigorous detective system throughout the kingdom; they did
the work of spies, and urged the nation along a path of
obedience, from which it had no business to swerve.

Justice, thus informed with monarchical enthusiasm,
atoned for the errors of the ancient parliaments, and walked,
perhaps, too ostentatiously hand in hand with religion There
was more zeal than discretion shown; but justice sinned not
so much in the direction of machiavelism as by giving too
candid expression to its views, when those views appeared to

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 259

be opposed to the general interests of a country which must
be put safely out of reach of revolutions. But taken as a
whole, there was still too much of the bourgeois element in
the administration ; it was too readily moved by petty Liberal
agitation ; and as a result, it was inevitable that it should in-
cline sooner or later to the Constitutional party, and join
ranks with the bourgeoisie in the day of battle. In the great
body of legal functionaries, as in other departments of the
administration, there was not wanting a certain hypocrisy,
or rather that spirit of imitation which always leads France
to model herself on the Court, and, quite unintentionally, to
deceive the powers that be.

Officials of both complexions were to be found in the court
in which young d'Esgrignon's fate depended. M. le Presi-
dent du Ronceret and an elderly judge, Blondet by name, rep-
resented the section of functionaries shelved for good, and
resigned to stay where they were; while the young and
ambitious party comprised the examining magistrate M.
Camusot, and his deputy M. Michu, appointed through the
interests of the Cinq-Cygnes, and certain of promotion to the
Court of Appeal of Paris at the first opportunity.

President du Ronceret held a permanent post; it was im-
possible to turn him out. The aristocratic party declined to
give him what he considered to be his due, socially speaking;
so he declared for the bourgeoisie, glossed over his disappoint-
ment with the name of independence, and failed to realize
that his opinions condemned him to remain a president of
a court of first instance for the rest of his life.
Once started in this track the sequence of events led du Ron-
ceret to place his hopes of advancement on the triumph of du
Croisier and the Left. He was in no better odor at the Pre-
fecture than at the Court-Royal. He was compelled to keep
on good terms with the authorities; the Liberals distrusted
him, consequently he belonged to neither party. He was
obliged to resign his chances of election to du Croisier, he
exercised no influence, and played a secondary part. The
false position reacted on his character ; he was soured and dis-
contented; he was tired of political ambiguity, and privately

1'60 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

had made up his mind to come forward openly as leader of
the Liberal party, and so to strike ahead of du Croisier. His
behavior in the d'Esgrignon affair was the first step in this
direction. To begin with, he was an admirable representa-
tive of that section of the middle classes which allows its petty
passions to obscure the wider interests of the country ; a class
of crotchety politicians, upholding the government one day
and opposing it the next, compromising every cause and help-
ing none ; helpless after they have done the mischief till they
set about brewing more; unwilling to face their own incom-
petence, thwarting authority while professing to serve it.
With a compound of arrogance and humility they demand of
the people more submission than kings expect, and fret their
souls because those above them are not brought down to their
level, as if greatness could be little, as if power existed with-
out force.

President du Eonceret was a tall, spare man with a receding
forehead and scanty, auburn hair. He was wall-eyed, his
complexion was blotched, his lips thin and hard, his scarcely
audible voice came out like the husky wheezings of asthma.
He had for a wife a great, solemn, clumsy creature, tricked
out in the most ridiculous fashion, and outrageously over-
dressed. Mme. la Presidente gave herself the airs of a queen ;
she wore vivid colors, and always appeared at balls adorned
with the turban, dear to the British female, and lovingly
cultivated in out-of-the-way districts in France. Each of the
pair had an income of four or five thousand francs, which,
with the President's salary, reached a total of some twelve
thousand. In spite of a decided tendency to parsimony,
vanity required that they should receive one evening in the
week. Du Croisier might import modern luxury into the
town, M. and Mme. du Eonceret were faithful to the old tradi-
tions. They had always lived in the old-fashioned house be-
longing to Mme. du Eonceret, and had made no changes in it
since their marriage. The house stood between a garden and
a courtyard. The gray old gable end, with one window in
each story, gave upon the road. High walls enclosed the

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 2<U

garden and the yard, but the space taken up beneath them in
the garden by a walk shaded with chestnut trees was filled in
the yard by a row of outbuildings. An old rust-devoured
iron gate in the garden wall balanced the yard gateway, a
huge, double-leaved carriage entrance with a buttress on either
side, and a mighty shell on the top. The same shell was
repeated over the house-door.

The whole place was gloomy, close, and airless. The row
of iron-grated openings in the opposite wall, as you entered,
reminded you of prison windows. Every passer-by could look
in through the railings to see how the garden grew; the
flowers in the little square borders never seemed to thrive
there.

The drawing-room on the ground floor was lighted by a
single window on the side of the street, and a French window
above a flight of steps, which gave upon the garden. The
dining-room on the other side of the great ante-chamber, with
its windows also looking out into the garden, was exactly
the same size as the drawing-room, and all three apartments
were in harmony with the general air of gloom. It wearied
your eyes to look at the ceilings all divided up by huge painted
crossbeams and adorned with a feeble lozenge pattern or a
rosette in the middle. The paint was old, startling in tint,
and begrimed with smoke. The sun had faded the heavy
silk curtains in the drawing-room ; the old-fashioned Beauvais
tapestry which covered the white-painted furniture had lost all
its color with wear. A Louis Quinze clock on the chimney-
piece stood between two extravagant, branched sconces filled
with yellow wax candles, which the Presidente only lighted on
occasions when the old-fashioned rock-crystal chandelier
emerged from its green wrapper. Three card-tables, covered
with threadbare baize, and a backgammon box, sufficed for the
recreations of the company; and Mme. du Ronceret treated
them to such refreshments as cider, chestnuts, pastry puffs,
glasses of eau sucree, and home-made orgeat. For some time
past she had made a practice of giving a party once a fort-
night, when tea and some pitiable attempts at pastry appeared
to grace the occasion.

262 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Once a quarter the du Eoncerets gave a grand three-course
dinner, which made a great sensation in the town, a dinner
served up in execrable ware, but prepared with the science for
which the provincial cook is remarkable. It was a Gargantuan
repast, which lasted for six whole hours, and by abundance
the President tried to vie with du Croisier's elegance.

And so du Eonceret's life and its accessories were just what
might have been expected from his character and his false
position. He felt dissatisfied at home without precisely know-
ing what was the matter ; but he dared not go to any expense
to change existing conditions, and was only too glad to put
by seven or eight thousand francs every year, so as to leave
his son Fabien a handsome private fortune. Fabien du Bon-
ceret had no mind for the magistracy, the bar, or the civil
service, and his pronounced turn for doing nothing drove his
parent to despair.

On this head there was rivalry between the President and
the Vice-President, old M. Blondet. M, Blondet, for a long
time past, had been sedulously cultivating an acquaintance be-
tween his son and the Blandureau family. The Blandureaus
were well-to-do linen manufacturers, with an only daughter,
and it was on this daughter that the President had fixed his
choice of a wife for Fabien. Now, Joseph Blondet's marriage
with Mile. Blandureau depended on his nomination to the
post which his father, old Blondet, hoped to obtain for him
when he himself should retire. But President du Eonceret,
in underhand ways, was thwarting the old man's plans, and
working indirectly upon the Blandureaus. Indeed, if it had
not been for this affair of young d'Esgrignon's, the astute
President might have cut them out, father and son, for their
rivals were very much richer.

M. Blondet, the victim of the machiavelian President's
intrigues, was one of the curious figures which lie buried away
in the provinces like old coins in a crypt. He was at that
time a man of sixty-seven or thereabouts, but he carried his
years well ; he was very tall, and in build reminded you of the
canons of the good old times. The smallpox had riddled his

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 2G3

face with numberless dints, and spoilt the shape of his nose by
imparting to it a gimlet-like twist ; it was a countenance by no
means lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused
red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with a sardonic
look in them, while a certain sarcastic twitch of the purpled
lips gave expression to that feature.

Before the Eevolution broke out, Blondet senior had been
a barrister; afterwards he became the public accuser, and
one of the mildest of those formidable functionaries. Good-
man Blondet, as they used to call him, deadened the force of
the new doctrines by acquiescing in them all, and putting
none of them in practice. He had been obliged to send one
or two nobles to prison; but his further proceedings were
marked with such deliberation, that he brought them through
to the 9th Thermidor with a dexterity which won respect for
him on all sides. As a matter of fact, Goodman Blondet
ought to have been President of the Tribunal, but when the
courts of law were reorganized he had been set aside;
Napoleon's aversion for Republicans was apt to reappear
in the smallest appointments under his government. The
qualification of ex-public accuser, written in the margin of
'the list against Blondet's name, set the Emperor inquiring of
Carabaceres whether there might not be some scion of an
ancient parliamentary stock to appoint instead. The con-
sequence was that du Ronceret, whose father had been a
councillor of parliament, was nominated to the presidency;
but, the Emperor's repugnance notwithstanding, Cambaceres
allowed Blondet to remain on the bench, saying that the old
barrister was one of the best jurisconsults in France.

Blondet's talents, his knowledge of the old law of the land
and subsequent legislation, should by rights have brought
him far in his profession ; but he had this much in common
with some few great spirits : he entertained a prodigious con-
tempt for his own special knowledge, and reserved all his
pretentions, leisure, and capacity for a second pursuit un-
connected with the law. To this pursuit he gave his almost
exclusive attention. The good man was passionately fond of

264 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

gardening. He was in correspondence with some of the most
celebrated amateurs ; it was his ambition to create new species ;
he took an interest in botanical discoveries, and lived, in short,
in the world of flowers. Like all florists, he had a predilec-
tion for one particular plant ; the pelargonium was his especial
favorite. The court, the cases that came before it, and his]
outward life were as nothing to him compared with]
the inward life of fancies and abundant emotions which the!
old man led. He fell more and more in love with his flower- 1
seraglio ; and the pains which he bestowed on his garden, the I
sweet round of the labors of the months, held Goodman Blon- 1
det fast in his greenhouse. But for that hobby he would have J
been a deputy under the Empire, and shone conspicuous be- J
yond a doubt in the Corps Legislatif.

His marriage was the second cause of his obscurity. As a
man of forty, he was rash enough to marry a girl of eighteen, I
by whom he had a son named Joseph in the first year of their I
marriage. Three years afterwards Mme. Blondet, then the
prettiest woman in the town, inspired in the prefect of the
department a passion which ended only with her death. The
prefect was the father of her second son iSmile; the whole
town knew this, old Blondet himself knew it. The wife who
might have roused her husband's ambition, who might have
won him away from his flowers, positively encouraged the
judge in his botanical tastes. She no more cared to leave the
place than the prefect cared to leave his prefecture so long
as his mistress lived.

Blondet felt himself unequal at his age to a contest with
a young wife. He sought consolation in his greenhouse, andj
engaged a very pretty servant-maid to assist him to tend hisj
ever-changing bevy of beauties. So while the judge potted, |
pricked out, watered, layered, slipped, blended, and induced
his flowers to break, Mme. Blondet spent his substance on thej
dress and finery in which she shone at the prefecture. Onej
interest alone had power to draw her away from the tenderj
care of a romantic affection which the town came to admire!
in the end; and this interest was Smile's education. The

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 265

child of love was a bright and pretty boy, while Joseph was no
less heavy and plain-featured. The old judge, blinded by
paternal affection, loved Joseph as his wife loved ISmile.

For a dozen years M. Blondet bore his lot with perfect
resignation. He shut his eyes to his wife's intrigue with a
dignified, well-bred composure, quite in the style of an
eighteenth century grand seigneur; but, like all men with a
taste for a quiet life, he could cherish a profound dislike, and
he hated his younger son. When his wife died, therefore, in
1818, he turned the intruder out of the house, and packed him
off to Paris to study law on an allowance of twelve hundred
francs for all resource, nor could any cry of distress extract
another penny from his purse. Emile Blondet would have
gone under if it had not been for his real father.

M. Blondet's house was one of the prettiest in the town. .
It stood almost opposite the prefecture, with a neat little
court in front. A row of old-fashioned iron railings between
two brickwork piers enclosed it from the street; and a low
wall, also of brick, with a second row of railings along the
top, connected the piers with the neighboring house. The
little court, a space about ten fathoms in width by twenty
in length, was cut in two by a brick pathway which ran from
the gate to the house door between a border on either side.
Those borders were always renewed; at every season of the
year they exhibited a successful show of blossom, to the
admiration of the public. All along the back of the garden-
beds a quantity of climbing plants grew up and covered the
walls of the neighboring houses with a magnificent mantle;
the brickwork piers were hidden in clusters of honeysuckle;
and, to crown all, in a couple of terra-cotta vases at the sum-
rait, a pair of acclimatized cactuses disp^ed to the astonished
eyes of the ignorant those thick leaves bristling with spiny
defences which seem to be due to some plant disease.

It was a plain-looking house, built of brick, with brick-
work arches above the windows, and bright green Venetian
shutters to make it gay. Through the glass door you could
look straight across the house to the opposite glass door, at

2t>6 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

the end of a long passage, and down the central alley in the
garden beyond; while through the windows of the dining-
room and drawing-room, which extended, like the passage,
from back to front of the house, you could often catch further
glimpses of the flower-beds in a garden of about two acres in
extent. Seen from the road, the brick-work harmonized with
the fresh flowers and shrubs, for two centuries had overlaid it
with mosses and green and russet tints. No one could pass
through the town without falling in love with a house with
such charming surroundings, so covered with flowers and
mosses to the roof-ridge, where two pigeons of glazed crockery
ware were perched by way of ornament.

M. Blondet possessed an income of about four thousand
livres derived from land, besides the old house in the town.
He meant to avenge his wrongs legitimately enough. He
would leave his house, his lands, his seat on the bench to his
son Joseph, and the whole town knew what he meant to do.
He had made a will in that son's favor; he had gone as far
as the Code will permit a man to go in the way of disin-
heriting one child to benefit another; and what was more,
he had been putting by money for the past fifteen years to
enable his lout of a son to buy back from fimile that portion
of his father's estate which could not legally be taken away
from him.

Emile Blondet thus turned adrift had contrived to gain
distinction in Paris, but so far it was rather a name than a
practical result. Smile's indolence, recklessness, and happy-
go-lucky ways drove his real father to despair; and when
that father died, a half-ruined man, turned out of office by one
of the political reactions so frequent under the Restoration,
it was with a mind uneasy as to the future of a man endowed
with the most brilliant qualities.

Emile Blondet found support in a friendship with a Mile,
de Troisville, whom he had known before her marriage with
the Comte de Montcornet. His mother was living when the
Troisvilles came back after the emigration; she was related
to the family, distantly it is true, but the connection was

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 2G?

close enough to allow her to introduce Emile to the house.
She, poor woman, foresaw the future. She knew that when
she died her son would lose both mother and father, a thought
which made death doubly bitter, so she tried to interest others
in him. She encouraged the liking that sprang up between
fimile and the eldest daughter of the house of Troisville ; but
while the liking was exceedingly strong on the young lady's
part, a marriage was out of the question. It was a romance
on the pattern of Paul et Virginie. Mme. Blondet did what
she could to teach her son to look to the Troisvilles, to found
a lasting attachment on a children's game of "make-believe"
love, which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances usually
do. When Mile, de Troisville's marriage with General Mont-
cornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a dying woman, went to
the bride and solemnly implored her never to abandon Emile,
and to use her influence for him in society in Paris, whither
the General's fortune summoned her to shine.

Luckily for Smile, he was able to make his own way. He
made his appearance, at the age of twenty, as one of the
masters of modern literature ; and met with no less success in
the society into which he was launched by the father who at
first could afford to bear the expense of the young man's ex-
travagance. Perhaps Smile's precocious celebrity and the
good figure that he made strengthened the bonds of his friend-
ship with the Countess. Perhaps Mme. de Montcornet, with
the Russian blood in her veins (her mother was the daughter
of the Princess Scherbelloff ), might have cast off the friend of
her childhood if he had been a poor man struggling with all
his might among the difficulties which beset a man of letters
in Paris ; but by the time that the real strain of Emile's ad-
venturous life began, their attachment was unalterable on
either side. He was looked upon as one of the leading lights
of journalism when young d'Esgrignon met him at his first
supper-party in Paris ; his acknowledged position in the world
of letters was very high, and he towered above his reputation.
Goodman Blondet had not the faintest conception of the
power which the Constitutional Government had given to the

2G8 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

press; nobody ventured to talk in his presence of the son of
whom he refused to hear. And so it came to pass that he knew
nothing of Emile whom h« had cursed and Emile's great-
ness.

Old Blondet's integrity was as deeply rooted in him as his
passion for flowers ; he knew nothing but law and botany. He
would have interviews with litigants, listen to them, chat
with them, and show them his flowers; he would accept
rare seeds from them; but once on the bench, no judge
on earth was more impartial. Indeed, his manner of
proceeding was so well known, that litigants never went
near him except to hand over some document which
might enlighten him in the performance of his duty,
and nobody tried to throw dust in his eyes. With his
learning, Ins lights, and his way of holding his real talents
cheap, he was so indispensable to President du Ronceret, that,
matrimonial schemes apart, that functionary would have done
all that he could, in an underhand way, to prevent the vice-
president from retiring in favor of his son. If the learned
old man left the bench, the President would be utterly unable
to do without him.

Goodman Blondet did not know that it was in Smile's
power to fulfil all his wishes in a few hours. The simplicity
of his life was worthy of one of Plutarch's men. In the even-
ing he looked over his cases ; next morning he worked among
his flowers ; and all day long he gave decisions on the bench.
The pretty maid-servant, now of ripe age, and wrinkled like
an Easter pippin, looked after the house, and they lived ac-
cording to the established customs of the strictest parsimony.
Mile. Cadot always carried the keys of her cupboards and
fruit-loft about with her. She was indefatigable. She went to
market herself, she cooked and dusted and swept, and never
missed mass of a morning. To give some idea of the domestic
life of the household, it will be enough to remark that the
father and son never ate fruit till it was beginning to spoil,
because Mile. Cadot always brought out anything that would
not keep. No one in the house ever tasted the luxury of new

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 269

bread, and all the fast days in the calendar were punctually
observed. The gardener was put on rations like a soldier ; the
elderly Valideh always kept an eye upon him. And she, for
her part, was so deferentially treated, that she took her meals
with the family, and in consequence was continually trotting
to and fro between the kitchen and the parlor at breakfast
and dinner time.

Mile. Blandureau's parents had consented to her marriage
with Joseph Blondet upon one condition — the penniless and
briefless barrister must be an assistant judge. So, with the
desire of fitting his son to fill the position, old M. Blondet
racked his brains to hammer the law into his son's head by
dint of lessons, so as to make a cut-and-dried lawyer of him.
As for Blondet junior, he spent almost every evening at the
Blandureaus' house, to which also young Fabien du Ronceret
had been admitted since his return, without raising the
slightest suspicion in the minds of father or son.

Everything in this life of theirs was measured with an ac-
curacy worthy of Gerard Dow's Money Changer ;not a grain of
salt too much, not a single profit foregone; but the economical
principles by which it was regulated were relaxed in favor of
the greenhouse and garden. "The garden was the master's
craze," Mile. Cadot used to say The master's blind fondness
for Joseph was not a craze in her eyes ; she shared the father's
predilection ; she pampered Joseph ; she darned his stockings ;
and would have been better pleased if the money spent on the
garden had been put by for Joseph's benefit.

That garden was kept in marvelous order by a single man ;
the paths, covered with river-sand, continually turned over
with the rake, meandered among the borders full of the rarest
flowers. Here were all kinds of color and scent, here were
lizards on the walls, legions of little flower-pots standing out
in the sun, regiments of forks and hoes, and a host of innocent
things, a combination of pleasant results to justify the
gardener's charming hobby.

At the end of the greenhouse the judge had set up a grand-
stand, an amphitheatre of benches to hold some five or six

270 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

thousand pelargoniums in pots — a splendid and famous show.
People came to see his geraniums in flower, not only from
the neighborhood, but even from the departments round
about. The Empress Marie Louise, passing through the town,
had honored the curiously kept greenhouse with a visit; so
much was she impressed with the sight, that she spoke of it
to Napoleon, and the old judge received the Cross of the
Legion of Honor. But as the learned gardener never mingled
in society at all, and went nowhere except to the Blandureaus,
he had no suspicion of the President's underhand manoeuvres ;
and others who could see the President's intentions were far
too much afraid of him to interfere or to warn the inoffensive
Blondets.

As for Michu, that young man with his powerful connec-
tions gave much more thought to making himself agreeable
to the women in the upper social circles to which he was in-
troduced by the Cinq-Cygnes, than to the extremely simple
business of a provincial Tribunal. With his independent
means (he had an income of twelve thousand livres), he was
courted by mothers of daughters, and led a frivolous life.
He did just enough at the Tribunal to satisfy his conscience,
much as a schoolboy does his exercises, saying ditto on all
occasions, with a "Yes, dear President." But underneath the
appearance of indifference lurked the unusual powers of the
Paris law student who had distinguished himself as one of
the staff of prosecuting counsel before he came to the prov-
inces. He was accustomed to taking broad views of things;
he could do rapidly what the President and Blondet could
only do after much thinking, and very often solved knotty
points for them. In delicate conjunctures the President and
Vice-President took counsel with their junior, confided thorny
questions to him, and never failed to wonder at the readiness
with which he brought back a task in which old Blondet found
nothing to criticise. Michu was sure of the influence of the
most crabbed aristocrats, and he was young and rich; he
lived, therefore, above the level of departmental intrigues
and pettinesses. He was an indispensable man at picnics,

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 271

he frisked with young ladies and paid court to their mothers,
he danced at balls, he gambled like a capitalist. In short,
he played his part of young lawyer of fashion to admiration ;
without, at the same time, compromising his dignity, which
he knew how to assert at the right moment like a man of
spirit. He won golden opinions by the manner in which he
threw himself into provincial ways, without criticising them ;
and for these reasons, every one endeavored to make his time
of exile endurable.

The public prosecutor was a lawyer of the highest ability;
he had taken the plunge into political life, and was one of the
most distinguished speakers on the ministerialist benches.
The President stood in awe of him ; if he had not been away
in Paris at the time, no steps would have been taken against
Victurnien; his dexterity, his experience of business, would
have prevented the whole affair. At that moment, however,
he was in the Chamber of Deputies, and the President and
du Croisier had taken advantage of his absence to weave their
plot, calculating, with a certain ingenuity, that if once the
law stepped in, and the matter was noised abroad, things
would have gone too far to be remedied.

As a matter of fact, no staff of prosecuting counsel in any
Tribunal, at that particular time, would have taken up a
charge of forgery against the eldest son of one of the noblest
houses in France without going into the case at great length,
and a special reference, in all probability, to the Attorney-
General. In such a case as this, the authorities and the
Government would have tried endless ways of compromising
and hushing up an affair which might send an imprudent
young man to the hulks. They would very likely have done
the same for a Liberal family in a prominent position, so long
as the Liberals were not too openly hostile to the throne and
the altar. So du Croisier's charge and the young Count's
arrest had not been very easy to manage. The President and
du Croisier had compassed their ends in the following man-
ner.

M. Sauvager, a young Royalist barrister, had reached the
vul. 7 — 40

272 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

position of deputy public prosecutor by dint of subservience
to the Ministry. In the absence of his chief he was head of
the staff of counsel for prosecution, and, consequently, it fell
to him to take up the charge made by du Croisier. Sauvager
was a self-made man; he had nothing but his stipend; and
for that reason the authorities reckoned upon some one who
had everything to gain by devotion. The President now
expoited the position. No sooner was the document with the
alleged forgery in du Croisier's hands, than Mme. la Presi-
dente du Eonceret, prompted by her spouse, had a long con-
versation with M. Sauvager. In the course of it she pointed
out the uncertainties of a career in the magistrature deb out
compared with the magistrature assise, and the advantages of
the bench over the bar; she showed how a freak on the part
of some official, or a single false step, might ruin a man's
career.

"If you are conscientious and give your conclusions against
the powers that be, you are lost/' continued she. "Now, at
this moment, you might turn your position to account to
make a fine match that would put you above unlucky chances
for the rest of your life ; you may marry a wife with fortune
sufficient to land you on the bench, in the magistrature assise.
There is a fine chance for you. M. du Croisier will never
have any children; everybody knows why. His money, and
his wife's as well, will go to his niece, Mile. Duval. M. Duval
is an ironmaster, his purse is tolerably filled, to begin with,
and his father is still alive, and has a little property besides.
The father and son have a million of francs between them;
they will double it with du Croisier's help, for du Croisier
has business connections among great capitalists and
manufacturers in Paris. M. and Mme. Duval the younger
would be certain to give their daughter to a suitor brought
forward by du Croisier, for he is sure to leave two fortunes
to his niece; and, in all probability, he will settle the rever-
sion of his wife's property upon Mile. Duval in the marriage-
contract, for Mme. du Croisier has no kin. You know how
du Croisier hates the d'Esgrignons. Do him a service, be his

The jealousies of a country town 27&

man, take up this charge of forgery which he is going to make
against young d'Esgrignon, and follow up the proceedings at
once without consulting the public prosecutor at Paris. And,
then, pray Heaven that the Ministry dismisses you for doing
your office impartially, in spite of the powers that be; for if
they do, your fortune is made! You will have a charming
wife and thirty thousand francs a year with her, to say
nothing of four millions of expectations in ten years' time."

In two evenings Sauvager was talked over. Both he and
the President kept the affair a secret from old Blondet, from
Michu, and from the second member of the staff of prosecut-
ing counsel. Feeling sure of Blondet's impartiality on a
question of fact, the President made certain of a majority
withoutcountingCamusot. And now Camusot's unexpected de-
fection had thrown everything out. What the President
wanted was a committal for trial before the public prosecutor
got warning. How if Camusot or the second counsel for the
prosecution should send word to Paris ?

And here some portion of Camusot's private history may
perhaps explain how it came to pass that Chesnel took it for
granted that the examining magistrate would be on the
d'Esgrignons' side, and how he had the boldness to tamper in
the open street with that representative of justice.

Camusot's father, a well-known silk mercer in the Rue des
Bourdonnais, was ambitious for the only son of his first
marriage, and brought him up to the law. When Camusot
junior took a wife, he gained with her the influence of an
usher of the Royal cabinet, backstairs influence, it is true, but
still sufficient, since it had brought him his first appointment
as justice of the peace, and the second as examining magis-
trate. At the time of his marriage, his father only settled
an income of six thousand francs upon him (the amount of his
mother's fortune, which he could legally claim), and as Mile.
Thirion brought him no more than twenty thousand francs
as her portion, the young couple knew the hardships of hidden
poverty. The salary of a provincial justice of the peace
does not exceed fifteen hundred francs, while an examining

274 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

magistrate's stipend is augmented by something like a thou-
sand francs, because his position entails expenses and extra
work. The post, therefore, is much coveted, though it is not
permanent, and the work is heavy, and that was why
Mme. Camusot had just scolded her husband for allowing the
President to read his thoughts.

Marie Cecile Amelie Thirion, after three years of marriage,
perceived the blessing of Heaven upon it in the regularity of
two auspicious events — the births of a girl and a boy; but
she prayed to be less blessed in future. A few more of
such blessings would turn straitened means into distress. M.
Camusot's father's money was not likely to come to them for a
long time; and, rich as he was, he would scarcely leave more
than eight or ten thousand francs a year to each of his
children, four in number, for he had been married twice.
And besides, by the time that all "expectations," as match-
makers call them, were realized, would not the magistrate have
children of his own to settle in life? Any one can imagine
the situation for a little woman with plenty of sense and de-
termination, and Mme. Camusot was such a woman. She did
not refrain from meddling in matters judicial. She had far
too strong a sense of the gravity of a false step in her hus-
band's career.

She was the only child of an old servant of Louis XVIIL,
a valet who had followed his master in his wanderings in
Italy, Courland, and England, till after the Eestoration the
King rewarded him with the one place that he could fill at
Court, and made him usher by rotation to the royal cabinet.
So in Amelie's home there had been, as it were, a sort of
reflection of the Court. Thirion used to tell her about the
lords, and ministers, and great men whom he announced and
introduced and saw passing to and fro The girl, brought up
at the gates of the Tuileries, had caught some tincture of the
maxims practised there, and adopted the dogma of passive
obedience to authority She had sagely judged that her hus-
band, by ranging himself on the side of the d'Esgrignons,
would find favor with Mme. la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 275

and with two powerful families on whose influence with the
King the Sieur Thirion could depend at an opportune
moment. Camusot might get an appointment at the first op-
portunity within the jurisdiction of Paris, and afterwards
at Paris itself. That promotion, dreamed of and longed for
at every moment, was certain to have a salary of six thousand
francs attached to it, as well as the alleviation of living in her
own father's house, or under the Camusots' roof, and all the
advantages of a father's fortune on either side. If the adage,
"Out of sight is out of mind," holds good of most women, it
is particularly true where family feeling or royal or min-
isterial patronage is concerned. The personal attendants of
kings prosper at all times ; you take an interest in a man, be it
only a man in livery, if you see him every day.

Mme. Camusot, regarding herself as a bird of passage, had
taken a little house in the Rue du Cygne. Furnished
lodgings there were none; the town was not enough of a
thoroughfare, and the Camusots could not afford to live at
an inn like M. Michu. So the fair Parisian had no choice for
it but to take such furniture as she could find ; and as she paid
a very moderate rent, the house was remarkably ugly, albeit
a certain quaintness of detail was not wanting. It was built
against a neighboring house in such a fashion that the side,
with only one window in each story, gave upon the street, and
the front looked out upon a yard where rose-bushes and buck-
horn were growing along the wall on either side. On the
farther side, opposite the house, stood a shed, a roof over two
brick arches. A little wicket-gate gave entrance into the
gloomy place (made gloomier still by the great walnut-tree
which grew in the yard), and a double flight of steps, with an
elaborately-wrought but rust-eaten handrail, led to the house
door. Inside the house there were two rooms on each floor.
The dining-room occupied that part of the ground floor near-
est the street, and the kitchen lay on the other side of a nar-
row passage almost wholly taken up by the wooden staircase.
Of the two first-floor rooms, one did duty as the magistrate's
study, the other as a bedroom, while the nursery and the

27G THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

servants' bedroom stood above in the attics. There were no
ceilings in the house; the cross-beams were simply white-
washed and the spaces plastered over. Both rooms on the
first floor and the dining-room below were wainscoted and
adorned with the labyrinthine designs which taxed the
patience of the eighteenth century joiner; but the carving
had been painted a dingy gray most depressing to behold.

The magistrate's study looked as though it belonged to a
provincial lawyer; it contained a big bureau, a mahogany
armchair, a law student's books, and shabby belongings trans-
ported from Paris. Mme. Camusot's room was more of a
native product ; it boasted a blue-and-white scheme of decora-
tion, a carpet, and that anomalous kind of furniture which
appears to be in the fashion, while it is simply some style that
has failed in Paris. As to the dining-room, it was nothing
but an ordinary provincial dining-room, bare and chilly, with
a damp, faded paper on the walls.

In this shabby room, with nothing to see but the walnut-
tree, the dark leaves growing against the walls, and the almost
deserted road beyond them, a somewhat lively and frivolous
woman, accustomed to the amusements and stir of Paris, used
to sit all day long, day after day, and for the most part of
the time alone, though she received tiresome and inane visits
which led her to think her loneliness preferable to empty
tittle-tattle. If she permitted herself the slightest gleam of
intelligence, it gave rise to interminable comment and em-
bittered her condition. She occupied herself a great deal with
her children, not so much from taste as for the sake of an in-
terest in her almost solitary life, and exercised her mind on the
only subjects which she could find— to wit, the intrigues which
went on around her, the ways of provincials, and the ambi-
tions shut in by their narrow horizons. So she very soon
fathomed mysteries of which her husband had no idea. As
she sat at her window with a piece of intermittent embroidery
work in her fingers, she did not see her woodshed full of
faggots nor the servant busy at the wash tub; she was looking
out upon Paris, Paris where everything is pleasure, every-

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 277

thing is full of life. She dreamed of Paris gaieties, and shed
tears because she must abide in this dull prison of a country
town. She was disconsolate because she lived in a peaceful
district, where no conspiracy, no great affair would evert occur.
She saw herself doomed to sit under the shadow of the walnut-
tree for some time to come.

Mme. Camusot was a little, plump, fresh, fair-haired wo-
man, with a very prominent forehead, a mouth which receded,
and a turned-up chin, a type of countenance which is passable
in youth, but looks old before the trine. Her bright, quick
eyes expressed her innocent desire to get on in the world,
and the envy born of her present inferior position, with rather
too much candor; but still they lighted up her commonplace
face and set if off with a certain energy of feeling, which suc-
cess was certain to extinguish in later life. At that time she
used to give a good deal of time and thought to her dresses,
inventing trimmings and embroidering them ; she planned out
her costumes with the maid whom she had brought with her
from Paris, and so maintained the reputation of Parisiennes
in the provinces. Her caustic tongue was dreaded; she was
not beloved. In that keen, investigating spirit peculiar to
unoccupied women who are driven to find some occupation
for empty days, she had pondered the President's private opin-
ions, until at length she discovered what he meant to do, and
for some time past she had advised Camusot to declare war.
The young Count's affair was an excellent opportunity. Was
it not obviously Camusot's part to make a stepping-stone of
this criminal case by favoring the d'Esgrignons, a family with
power of a very different kind from the power of the du
Croisier party?

"Sauvager will never marry Mile. Duval. They are dan-
gling her before him, but he will be the dupe of those
Machiavels in the Val-Noble to whom he is going to sacrifice
his position. Camusot, this affair, so unfortunate as it is
for the d'Esgrignons, so insidiously brought on by the Presi-
dent for du Croisier's benefit, will turn out well for nobody
but you" she had said, as they went in.

278 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

The shrewd Parisienne had likewise guessed the Presi-
dent's underhand manoeuvres with the Blandureaus, and his
object in baffling old Blondet's efforts, but she saw nothing to
be gained by opening the eyes of father or son to the perils of
the situation; she was enjoying the beginning of the comedy;
she knew about the proposals made by Chesnel's successor on
behalf of Fabien du Ronceret, but she did not suspect how im-
portant that secret might be to her. If she or her husband
were threatened by the President, Mme. Camusot could
threaten too, in her turn, to call the amateur gardener's at-
tention to a scheme for carrying off the flower which he meant
to transplant into his house.

Chesnel had not penetrated, like Mme. Camusot, into the
means by which Sauvager had been won over; but by dint of
looking into the various lives and interests of the men
grouped about the Lilies of the Tribunal, he knew that he
could count upon the public prosecutor, upon Camusot, and
M. Michu. Two judges for the d'Esgrignons would paralyze
the rest. And, finally, Chesnel knew old Blondet well enough
to feel sure that if he ever swerved from impartiality, it would
be for the sake of the work of his whole lifetime, — to secure
his son's appointment. So Chesnel slept, full of confidence,
on the resolve to go to M. Blondet and offer to realize his so
long cherished hopes, while he opened his eyes to President
du Eonceret's treachery. Blondet won over, he would take a
peremptory tone with the examining magistrate, to whom
he hoped to prove that if Vieturnien was not blameless, he
had been merely imprudent ; the whole thing should be shown
in the light of a boy's thoughtless escapade.

But Chesnel slept neither soundly nor for long. Before
dawn he was awakened by his housekeeper. The most be-
witching person in this history, the most adorable youth on
the face of the globe, Mme. la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse her-
self, in man's attire, had driven alone from Paris in a caleche,
and was waiting to see him.

"I have come to save him or to die with him," said she,
addressing the notary, who thought that he was dreaming.

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 279

"I have brought a hundred thousand francs, given me by
His Majesty out of his private purse, to buy Victurnien's in-
nocence, if his adversary can be bribed. If we fail utterly,
I have brought poison to snatch him away before anything
takes place, before even the indictment is drawn up. But
we shall not fail. I have sent word to the public prosecutor ;
he is on the road behind me; he could not travel in my
caleche, because he wished to take the instructions of the
Keeper of the Seals."

Chesnel rose to the occasion and played up to the Duchess ;
he wrapped himself in his dressing-gown, fell at her feet and
kissed them, not without asking her pardon for forgetting
himself in his joy.

"We are saved!" cried he; and gave orders to Erigitte to
see that Mme. la Duchesse had all that she needed after travel-
ing post all night. He appealed to the fair Diane's spirit,
by making her see that it was absolutely necessary that she
should visit the examining magistrate before daylight, lest
any one should discover the secret, or so much as imagine that
the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had come.

"And have I not a passport in due form ?" quoth she, dis-
playing a sheet of paper, wherein she was described as M. le
Vicomte Felix de Vandenesse, Master of Requests, and His
Majesty's private secretary. "And do I not play my man's
part well?" she added, running her fingers through her wig
a la Titus, and twirling her riding switch.

"0 ! Mme. la Duchesse, you are an angel !" cried Chesnel,
with tears in his eyes. (She was destined always to be an
angel, even in man's attire.) "Button up your greatcoat,
muffle yourself up to the eyes in your traveling cloak, take
my arm, and let us go as quickly as possible to Camusot's
house before anybody can meet us."

"Then am I going to see a man called Camusot?" she
asked.

"With a nose to match his name,"* assented Chesnel.

The old notary felt his heart dead within him, but he

* Camus, flat-nosed

280 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

thought it none the less necessary to humor the Duchess, tc
laugh when she laughed, and shed tears when she wept
groaning in spirit, all the same, over the feminine frivolit}
which could find matter for a jest while setting about i
matter so serious. What would he not have done to sav<
the Count? While Chesnel dressed, Mme. de Maufrigneusr
sipped the cup of coffee and cream which Brigitte brough
her, and agreed with herself that provincial women cooks an!
superior to the Parisian chefs, who despise the little detail!
which make all the difference to an epicure. Thanks t<j
Chesnel's taste for delicate fare, Brigitte was found preparer'
to set an excellent meal before the Duchess.

Chesnel and his charming companion set out for M. an<j
Mme. Camusot's house.

"Ah! so there is a Mme. Camusot:'" said the Duchess
"Then the affair may be managed."

"And so much the more readily, because the lady is visibl
tired enough of living among us provincials ; she comes f roi
Paris," said Chesnel.

"Then we must have no secrets from her?"

"You will judge how much to tell or to conceal," Chesnw
replied humbly. "I am sure that she will be greatly flattere
to be the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse's hostess; you will In
obliged to stay in her house until nightfall, I expect, unles
you find it inconvenient to remain."

"Is this Mme. Camusot a good-looking woman?" asked tn]
Duchess, with a coxcomb's air.

"She is a bit of a queen in her own house."

"Then she is sure to meddle in court-house affairs," r
turned the Duchess. "Nowhere but in France, my dear 3
Chesnel, do you see women so much wedded to their husbam
that they are wedded to their husbands' professions, work, <
business as well. In Italy, England, and Germany, wom<
make it a point of honor to leave men to fight their ov
battles; they shut their eyes to their husbands' work
perseveringly as our French citizens' wives do all that in the
lies to understand the position of their joint-stock partne

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 281

ship; is not that what you call it in your legal language?
Frenchwomen are so incredibly jealous in the conduct of their
married life, that they insist on knowing everything ; and that
is how, in the least difficulty, you feel the wife's hand in the
business; the Frenchwoman advises, guides, and warns her
husband. And, truth to tell, the man is none the worse off.
In England, if a married man is put in prison for debt for
twenty-four hours, his wife will be jealous and make a scene
when he comes back/'

"Here we are, without meeting a soul on the way," said
Chesnel. "You are the more sure of complete ascendency
here, Mme. la Duchesse, since Mme. Camusot's father is one
Thirion, usher of the royal cabinet."

"And the King never thought or that!" exclaimed the
Duchess. "He thinks of nothing! Thirion introduced us,
the Prince de Cadignan, M. de Vandenesse, and me! We
shall have it all our own way in this house. Settle everything
with M. Camusot while I talk to his wife."

The maid, who was washing and dressing the children,
showed the visitors into the little tireless dining-room.

"Take that card to your mistress," said the Duchess, lower-
ing her voice for the woman's ear; "nobody else is to see it.
If you are discreet, child, you shall not lose by it."

At the sound of a woman's voice, and the sight of the hand-
some young man's face, the maid looked thunderstruck.

"Wake M. Camusot," said Chesnel, "and tell him, that I
am waiting to see him on important business," and she de-
parted upstairs forthwith.

A few minutes later Mme. Camusot, in her dressing-gown,
sprang downstairs, and brought the handsome stranger into
her room. She had pushed Camusot out of bed and into his
study with all his clothes, bidding him dress himself at once
and wait there. The transformation scene had been brought
about by a bit of pasteboard with the words Madame la
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse engraved upon it. A daughter
of the usher of the royal cabinet took in the whole situation
at once.

282 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"Well I" exclaimed the maid-servant, left with Chesnel in
the dining-room, "would not any one think that a thunder-
bolt had dropped in among us? The master is dressing in
his study; you can go upstairs."

"Not a word of all this, mind," said Chesnel.

Now that he was conscious of the support of a great lady
who had the King's consent (by word of mouth) to the
measures about to be taken for rescuing the Comte d'Esgri-
gnon, he spoke with an air of authority, which served his
cause much better with Camusot than the humility with
which he would otherwise have approached him.

"Sir," said he, "the words let fall last evening may have
surprised you, but they are serious. The house of
d'Esgrignon counts upon you for the proper conduct of in-
vestigations from which it must issue without a spot."

"I shall pass over anything in your remarks, sir, which
must be offensive to me personally, and obnoxious to justice;
for your position with regard to the d'Esgrignons excuses you
up to a certain point, but "

"Pardon me, sir, if I interrupt you," said Chesnel. "I
have just spoken aloud the things which your superiors are
thinking and dare not avow; though what those things are
any intelligent man can guess, and you are an intelligent
man. — Grant that the young man had acted imprudently, can
you suppose that the sight of a d'Esgrigrjon dragged into an
Assize Court can be gratifying to the King, the Court, or
the Ministry? Is it to the interest of the kingdom, or of
the country, that historic houses should fall ? Is not the ex-
istence of a great aristocracy, consecrated by time, a guarantee
of that Equality which is the catchword of the Opposition
at this moment ? Well and good ; now not only has there not
been the slightest imprudence, but we are innocent victims
caught in a trap."

"I am curious to know how," said the examining magis-
trate.

"For the last two years, the Sieur du Croisier has regularly
allowed M. le Comte d'Esgrignon to draw upon him for very

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 283

large sums/' said Chesnel. "We are going to produce drafts
for more than a hundred thousand crowns, which he con-
tinually met; the amounts being remitted by me — bear that
well in mind — either before or after the bills fell due. M. le
Comte d'Esgrignon is in a position to produce a receipt for
the sum paid by him, before this bill, this alleged forgery,
was drawn. Can you fail to see in that case that this charge
is a piece of spite and party feeling ? And a charge brought
against the heir of a great house by one of the most dangerous
enemies of the Throne and Altar, what is it but an odious
slander ? There has been no more forgery in this affair than
there has been in my office. Summon Mme. du Croisier, who
knows nothing as yet of the charge of forgery ; she will declare
to you that I brought the money and paid it over to her, so
that in her husband's absence she might remit the amount
for which he has not asked her. Examine du Croisier on
the point ; he will tell you that he knows nothing of my pay-
ment to Mme. du Croisier."

"You may make such assertions as these, sir, in M. d'Esgri-
gnon's salon, or in any other house where people know noth-
ing of business, and they may be believed ; but no examining
magistrate, unless he is a driveling idiot, can imagine that
a woman like Mme. du Croisier, so submissive as she is to
her husband, has a hundred thousand crowns lying in her desk
at this moment, without saying a word to him ; nor yet that
an old notary would not have advised M. du Croisier of the
deposit on his return to town."

"The old notary, sir, had gone to Paris to put a stop to the
young man's extravagance."

"I have not yet examined the Comte d'Esgrignon," Camu-
sot began ; "his answers will point out my duty."

"Is he in close custody ?"

"Yes."

"Sir," said Chesnel, seeing danger ahead, "the examina-
tion can be made in our interests or against them. But there
are two courses open to you: you can establish the fact on
Mme. du Croisier's deposition that the amount was deposited
with her before the bill was drawn'; or you can examine

284 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

the unfortunate young man implicated in this affair, and he
in his confusion may remember nothing and commit him-
self. You will decide which is the more credible — a slip of
memory on the part of a woman in her ignorance of
business, or a forgery committed by a d'Esgrignon."

"All this is beside the point," began Camusot; "the ques-
tion is, whether M. le Comte d'Esgrignon has or has not used
the lower half of a letter addressed to him by du Croisier as
a bill of exchange."

"Eh! and so he might," a voice cried suddenly, as Mme.
Camusot broke in, followed by the handsome stranger, "so
he might, when M. Chesnel had advanced the money to meet
the bill "

She leant over her husband.

"You will have the first vacant appointment as assistant
judge at Paris, you are serving the King himself in this
affair ; I have proof of it ; you will not be forgotten," she said,
lowering her voice for his ear. "This young man that you
see here is the Duchesse de Mauf rigneuse ; you must never
have seen her, and do all that you can for the young Count
boldly."

"Gentlemen," said Camusot, "even if the preliminary ex-
amination is conducted to prove the young Count's innocence,
can I answer for the view the court may take ? M. Chesnel,
and you also, my sweet, know what M. le President wants."

"Tut, tut, tut!" said Mme. Camusot, "go yourself to M.
Michu this morning, and tell him that the Count has been
arrested; you will be two against two in that case, I will be
bound. Michu comes from Paris, and you know that he is
devoted to the noblesse. Good blood cannot lie."

At that very moment Mile. Cadot's voice was heard in the
doorway. She had brought a note, and was waiting for an
answer. Camusot went out, and came back again to read the
note aloud :

"M. le Vice-President begs M. Camusot to sit in audience
to-day and for the next few clays, so that there may be a
quorum during M. le President's absence."

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 285

"Then there is an end of the preliminary examination!"
cried Mme. Camusot. "Did I not tell yon, dear, that they
would play you some ugly trick ? The President has gone off to
slander you to the public prosecutor and the President of the
Court-Eoyal. You will be changed before you can make the
examination. Is that clear ?"

"You will ?tay, monsieur," said the Duchess. "The public
prosecutor is coming, I hope, in time."

"When the public prosecutor arrives," little Mme. Camu-
sot said, with some heat, "he must find all over. — Yes, my
dear, yes," she added, looking full at her amazed husband. —
"Ah ! old hypocrite of a President, you are setting your wits
against us ; you shall remember it ! You have a mind to help
us to a dish of your own making, you shall have two served up
to you by your humble servant Cecile Amelie Thirion! —
Poor old Blondet! It is lucky for him that the President
has taken this journey to turn us out, for now that great oaf
of a Joseph Blondet will marry Mile. Blandureau. I will
let Father Blondet have some seeds in return. — As for you,
Camusot, go to M. Michu's, while Mme. la Duchesse and I
will go to find old Blondet. You must expect to hear it said
all over the town to-morrow that I took a walk with a lover
this morning."

Mme. Camusot took the Duchess' arm, and they went
through the town by deserted streets to avoid any unpleasant
adventure on the way to the old Vice-President's house.
Chesnel meanwhile conferred with the young Count in prison ;
Camusot had arranged a stolen interview. Cook-maids,
servants, and the other early risers of a country town, seeing
Mme. Camusot and the Duchess taking their way through
the back streets, took the young gentleman for an adorer from
Paris. That evening, as Cecile Amelie had said, the news of
her behavior was circulated about the town, and more than
one scandalous rumor was occasioned thereby. Mme. Camu-
sot and her supposed lover found old Blondet in his green-
house. He greeted his colleague's wife and her companion,
and gave the charming young man a keen, uneasy glance.

286 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"I have the honor to introduce one of my husband's
cousins/' said Mme. Camusot, bringing forward the Duchess ;
"he is one of the most distinguished horticulturists in Paris ;
and as he cannot spend more than the one day with us, on his
way back from Brittany, and has heard of your flowers and
plants, I have taken the liberty of coming early."

"Oh, the gentleman is a horticulturist, is he?" said old
Blondet.

The Duchess bowed.

"This is my coffee-plant," said Blondet, "and here is a tea-
plant."

"What can have taken M. le President away from home?"
put in Mme. Camusot. "I will wager that his absence con-
cerns M. Camusot."

"Exactly. — This, monsieur, is the queerest of all cactuses,"
he continued, producing a flower-pot which appeared to con-
tain a piece of mildewed rattan; "it comes from Australia.
You are very young, sir, to be a horticulturist."

"Dear M. Blondet, never mind your flowers," said Mme.
Camusot. "You are concerned, you and your hopes, and your
son's marriage with Mile. Blandureau. You are duped by the
President."

"Bah!" said old Blondet, with an incredulous air.

"Yes," retorted she. "If you cultivated people a little more
and your flowers a little less, you would know that the dowry
and the hopes that you have sown, and watered, and tilled,
and weeded are on the point of being gathered now by cunning
hands."

"Madame I "

"Oh, nobody in the town will have the courage to fly in the
President's face and warn you. I, however, do not belong to
the town, and, thanks to this obliging young man, I shall soon
be going back to Paris; so I can inform you that Chesnel's
successor has made formal proposals for Mile. Claire Blan-
dureau's hand on behalf of young du Eonceret, who is to have
fifty thousand crowns from his parents. As for Fabien, he
has made up his mind to receive a call to the bar, so as to gain
an appointment as judge."

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 287

Old Blondet dropped the flower-pot which he had brought
out for the Duchess to see.

"Oh, my cactus! Oh, my son! and Mile. Blan-
dureau ! . . . Look here ! the cactus flower is broken to
pieces."

"No," Mme. Camusot answered, laughing; "everything
can be put right. If you have a mind to see your son a
judge in another month, we will tell you how you must set to
work "

"Step this way, sir, and you will see my pelargoniums, an

enchanting sight while they are in flower " Then he

added to Mme. Camusot, "Why did you speak of these mat-
ters while your cousin was present."

"All depends upon him," riposted Mme. Camusot. "Your
son's appointment is lost for ever if you let fall a word about
this young man."

"Bah!"

"The young man is a flower "

"Ah!"

"He is the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, sent here by His
Majesty to save young d'Esgrignon, whom they arrested yes-
terday on a charge of forgery brought against him by du
Croisier. Mme. la Duchesse has authority from the Keeper
of the Seals; he will ratify any promises that she makes to
us "

"My cactus is all right!" exclaimed Blondet, peering at
his precious plant. — "Go on, I am listening."

"Take counsel with Camusot and Michu to hush up the
affair as soon as possible, and your son will get the appoint-
ment. It will come in time enough to baffle du Ronceret's
underhand dealings with the Blandureaus. Your son will
be something better than assistant judge; he will have M.
Camusot's post within the year. The public prosecutor will
be here to-day. M. Sauvager will be obliged to resign, I
expect, after his conduct in this affair. At the court my hus-
band will show you documents which completely exonerate
the Count and prove that the forgery was a trap of du

Croisier's own setting."
vol. 7 — 41

288 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Old Blondet went into the Otympic circus where his six
thousand pelargoniums stood, and made his bow to the
Duchess.

"Monsieur," said he, "if your wishes do not exceed the law,
this thing may be done."

"Monsieur," returned the Duchess, "send in your resigna-
tion to M. Chesnel to-morrow, and I will promise you that
your son shall be appointed within the week; but you must
not resign until you have had confirmation of my promise
from the public prosecutor. You men of law will come to
a better understanding among yourselves. Only let him
know that the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse has pledged her
word to you. And not a word as to my journey hither," she
added.

The old judge kissed her hand and began recklessly to
gather his best flowers for her.

"Can you think of it? Give them to madame," said the
Duchess. "A young man would not have flowers about him
when he had a pretty woman on his arm."

"Before you go down to the court," added Mme. Camusot,
"ask ChesnePs successor about those proposals that he made
in the name of M. and Mme. du Eonceret."

Old Blondet, quite overcome by this revelation of the Presi-
dent's duplicity, stood planted on his feet by the wicket gate,
looking after the two women as they hurried away through
by-streets home again. The edifice raised so painfully during
ten years for his beloved son was crumbling visibly before
his eyes. Was it possible? He suspected some trick, and
hurried away to ChesnePs successor.

At half-past nine, before the court was sitting, Vice-Presi-
dent Blondet, Camusot, and Michu met with remarkable
punctuality in the council chamber. Blondet locked the door
with some precautions when Camusot and Michu came in to-
gether.

"Well, Mr. Vice-President," began Michu, "M. Sauvager,
without consulting the public prosecutor, has issued a warrant
for the apprehension of one Comte d'Esgrignon, in order to

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 289

serve a grudge borne against him by one du Croisier, an
enemy of the King's government. It is a regular topsy-turvy
affair. The President, for his part, goes away, and thereby
puts a stop to the preliminary examination ! And we know
nothing of the matter. Do they, by any chance, mean to
force our hand ?"

"This is the first word I have heard of it," said the Vice-
President. He was furious with the President for stealing a
march on him with the Blandureaus. ChesneFs successor,
the du Eoncerets' man, had just fallen into a snare set by
the old judge ; the truth was out, he knew the secret.

"It is lucky that we spoke to you about that matter, my
dear master," said Camusot, "or you might have given up all
hope of seating your son on the bench or of marrying him to
Mile. Blandureau."

"But it is no question of my son, nor of his marriage,"
said the Vice-President; "we are talking of young Comte
d'Esgrignon. Is he or is he not guilty ?"

"It seems that Chesnel deposited the amount to meet the
bill with Mme. du Croisier," said Michu, "and a crime has
been made of a mere irregularity. According to the charge,
the Count made use of the lower half of a letter bearing du
Croisier's signature as a draft which he cashed at the Kel-
lers'."

"An imprudent thing to do," was Camusot's comment.

"But why is du Croisier proceeding against him if the
amount was paid in beforehand ?" asked Vice-President Blon-
det.

"He does not know that the money was deposited with
his wife ; or he pretends that he does not know," said Camu-
sot.

"It is a piece of provincial spite," said Michu.

"Still it looks like a forgery to me," said old Blondet. No
passion could obscure judicial clear-sightedness in him.

"Do you think so?" returned Camusot. "But, at the out-
set, supposing that the Count had no business to draw upon
du Croisier, there would still be no forgery of the signature ;

200 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

and the Count believed that he had a right to draw on
Croisier when Chesnel advised him that the money had been
placed to his credit."

"Well, then, where is the forgery?" asked Blondet. "It
is the intent to defraud which constitutes forgery in a civil
action."

"Oh, it is clear, if you take du Croisier's version for truth,
that the signature was diverted from its purpose to obtain a
sum of money in spite of du Croisier's contrary injunction to
his bankers," Camusot answered.

"Gentlemen," said Blondet, "this seems to me to be a mere
trifle, a quibble. — Suppose you had the money, I ought per-
haps to have waited until I had your authorization; but I,

Comte d'Esgrignon, was pressed for money, so I Come,

come, your prosecution is a piece of revengeful spite.
Forgery is defined by the law as an attempt to obtain any ad-
vantage which rightfully belongs to another. There is no
forgery here, according to the letter of the Eoman law, nor
according to the spirit of modern jurisprudence (always from
the point of view of a civil action, for we are not here con-
cerned with the falsification of public or authentic docu-
ments). Between private individuals the essence of a forgery
is the intent to defraud; where is it in this case? In what
times are we living, gentlemen ? Here is the President going
cway to balk a preliminary examination which ought to be
over by this time ! Until to-day I did not know M. le Presi-
dent, but he shall have the benefit of arrears ; from this time
forth he shall draft his decisions himself. You must set
about this affair with all possible speed, M. Camusot."

"Yes," said Michu. "In my opinion, instead of letting the
young man out on bail, we ought to pull him out of this mess
at once. Everything turns on the examination of du Croisier
and his wife. You might summons them to appear while
the court is sitting, M. Camusot ; take down their depositions
before four o'clock, send in your report to-night, and we will
give our decision in the morning before the court sits."

"We will settle what course to pursue while the barristers

THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN 201

are pleading," said Vice-President Blondet, addressing
Camusot.

And with that the three judges put on their robes and went
into court.

At noon Mile. Armande and the Bishop reached the Hotel
d'Esgrignon; Chesnel and M. Couturier were there to meet
them. There was a sufficiently short conference between the
prelate and Mme. du Croisier's director, and the latter set
out at once to visit his charge.

At eleven o'clock that morning du Croisier received a sum-
mons to appear in the examining magistrate's office between
one and two in the afternoon. Thither he betook himself,
consumed by well-founded suspicions. It was impossible that
the President should have foreseen the arrival of the Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse upon the scene, the return of the public
prosecutor, and the hasty confabulation of his learned
brethren; so he had omitted to trace out a plan for du
Croisier's guidance in the event of the preliminary examina-
tion taking place. Neither of the pair imagined that the
proceedings would be hurried on in this way. Du Croisier
obeyed the summons at once; he wanted to know how M.
Camusot was disposed to act. So he was compelled to answer
the questions put to him. Camusot addressed him in sum-
mary fashion with the six following inquiries : —

"Was the signature on the bill alleged to be a forgery in
your handwriting? — Had you previously done business with
M. le Comte d'Esgrignon ? — Was not M. le Comte d'Esgrignon
in the habit of drawing upon you, with or without advice ? —
Did you not write a letter authorizing M. d'Esgrignon to rely
upon you at any time ? — Had not Chesnel squared the account
not once, but many times already ? — Were you not away from
home when this took place ?"

All these questions the banker answered in the affirmative.
In spite of wordy explanations, the magistrate always brought
him back to a "Yes" or "No." When the questions and
answers alike had been resumed in the proces- verbal, the ex-
amining magistrate brought out a final thunderbolt.

202 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

"Was du Croisier aware that the money destined to meet j
the bill had been deposited with him, du Croisier, according |
to Chesnel's declaration, and a letter of advice sent by the said
Chesnel to the Comte d'Esgrignon, five days before the date
of the bill?"

That last question frightened du Croisier. He asked what
was meant by it, and whether he was supposed to be the de-
fendant and M. le Comte d'Esgrignon the plaintiff? He
called the magistrate's attention to the fact that if the money
had been deposited with him, there was no ground for the
action.

"Justice is seeking information," said the magistrate, as
he dismissed the witness, but not before he had taken down
du Croisier's last observation.

"But the money, sir "

"The money is at your house."

Chesnel, likewise summoned, came forward to explain the
matter. The truth of his assertions was borne out by Mine,
du Croisier's deposition. The Count had already been ex-
amined. Prompted by Chesnel, he produced du Croisier's
first letter, in which he begged the Count to draw upon him
without the insulting formality of depositing the amount
beforehand. The Comte d'Esgrignon next brought out a
letter in Chesnel's handwriting, by which the notary advised
him of the deposit of a hundred thousand crowns with M.
du Croisier. With such primary facts as these to bring for-
ward as evidence, the young Count's innocence was bound to
emerge triumphantly from a court of law.

Du Croisier went home from the court, his face white
with rage, and the foam of repressed fury on his lips. His
wife was sitting by the fireside in the drawing-room at work
upon a pair of slippers for him. She trembled when she
looked' into his face, but her mind was made up.

"Madame," he stammered out, "what deposition is this
that you made before the magistrate ? You have dishonored,
ruined, and betrayed me !"

"I have saved you, monsieur," answered she. "If some

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 293

day you will have the honor of connecting yourself with the
d'Esgrignons by marrying your niece to the Count, it will
be entirely owing to my conduct to-day."

"A miracle !" cried, he. "Balaam's ass has spoken. Noth-
ing will astonish me after this. And where are the hundred
thousand crowns which (so M. Camusot tells me) are here
in my house ?"

"Here they are," said she, pulling out a bundle of bank-
notes from beneath the cushions of her settee. "I have not
committed mortal sin by declaring that M. Chesnel gave them
into my keeping."

"While I was away?"

"You were not here."

"Will you swear that to me on your salvation?"

"I swear it," she said composedly.

"Then why did you say nothing to me about it?" de-
manded he.

"I was wrong there," said his wife, "but my mistake was
all for your good. Your niece will be Marquise d'Esgrignon
some of these days, and you will perhaps be a deputy, if you
behave well in this deplorable business. You have gone too
far ; you must find out how to get back again."

Du Croisier, under stress of painful agitation, strode up
and down his drawing-room ; while his wife, in no les3 agita-
tion, awaited the result of this exercise. Du Croisier at
length rang the bell.

"I am not at home to any one to-night," he said, when the
man appeared; "shut the gates; and if any one calls, tell
them that your mistress and I have gone into the country.
We shall start directly after dinner, and dinner must be half
an hour earlier than usual."

The great news was discussed that evening in every draw-
.ng-room; little shopkeepers, working folk, beggars, the
loblesse, the merchant class — the whole town, in short, was
:alking of the Comte d'Esgrignon's arrest on a charge of
forgery. The Comte d'Esgrignon would be tried in the

294 THE JEALOUSIES OP A COUNTRY TOWN

Assize Court; he would be condemned and branded. Mosl
of those who cared for the honor of the family denied th(
fact. At nightfall Chesnel went to Mme. Camusot and es-
corted the stranger to the Hotel d'Esgrignon. Poor Mile
Armande was expecting him ; she led the fair Duchess to he]
own room, which she had given up to her, for his lordshij
the Bishop occupied Victurnien's chamber; and, left alon<
with her guest, the noble woman glanced at the Duchess witl
most piteous eyes.

"Your owed help, indeed, madame, to the poor boy wh<
ruined himself for your sake/' she said, "the boy to whom wi
are all of us sacrificing ourselves."

The Duchess had already made a woman's survey of Mile
d'Esgrignon's room; the cold, bare, comfortless chambei
that might have been a nun's cell, was like a picture of th
life of the heroic woman before her. The Duchess saw it alj
— past, present, and future — with rising emotion, felt th!
incongruity of her presence, and could not keep back th|
falling tears that made answer for her.

But in Mile. Armande the Christian overcame Victurnienj
aunt. "Ah, I was wrong; forgive me, Mme. la Duchessej
you did not know how poor we were, and my nephew was ii
capable of the admission. And besides, now that I see you, ;
can understand all — even the crime !"

And Mile. Armande, withered and thin and white, bi
beautiful as those tall austere slender figures which Genua;
art alone can paint, had tears too in her eyes.

"Do not fear, dear angel/' the Duchess said at last; "1
is safe."

"Yes, but honor ? — and his career ? Chesnel told me ; tl
King knows the truth."

"We will think of a way of repairing the evil," said tl I
Duchess.

Mile. Armande went downstairs to the salon, and fouij
the Collection of Antiquities complete to a man. Every o:
of them had come, partly to do honor to the Bishop, part U
to rally round the Marquis; but Chesnel, posted in the anl|

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 290

chamber, warned each new arrival to say no word of the affair,
that the aged Marquis might never know that such a thing had
been. The loyal Frank was quite capable of killing his son
or du Croisier; for either the one or the other must have
been guilty of death in his eyes. It chanced, strangely
enough, that he talked more of Victurnien than usual ; he was
glad that his son had gone back to Paris. The King would
give Victurnien a place before very long; the King was in-
teresting himself at last in the d'Esgrignons. And his
friends, their hearts dead within them, praised Victurnien's
conduct to the skies. Mile. Armande prepared the way for
her nephew's sudden appearance among them by remarking
to her brother that Victurnien would be sure to come to see
them, and that he must be even then on his way.

"Bah !" said the Marquis, standing with his back to the
hearth, "if he is doing well where he is, he ought to stay
there, and not to be thinking of the joy it would give his
old father to see him again. The King's service has the
first claim."

Scarcely one of those present heard the words without a
shudder. Justice might give over a d'Esgrignon to the ex-
ecutioner's branding iron. There was a dreadful pause.
The old Marquise de Casteran could not keep back a tear
that stole down over her rouge, and turned her head away
to hide it.

Next day at noon, in the sunny weather, a whole excited
population was dispersed in groups along the high street,
which ran through the heart of the town, and nothing was
talked of but the great affair. Was the Count in prison or
was he not ? — All at once the Comte d'Esgrignon's well-known
tilbury was seen driving down the Eue Saint-Blaise; it had
evidently come from the Prefecture, the Count himself was
on the box seat, and by his side sat a charming young man,
whom nobody recognized. The pair were laughing and talking
and in great spirits. They wore Bengal roses in their button-
holes. Altogether, it was a theatrical surprise which words
fail to describe.

296 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

At ten o'clock the court had decided to dismiss the charge,
stating their very sufficient reasons for setting the Count
at liberty, in a document which contained a thunderbolt for
du Croisier, in the shape of an inasmuch that gave the Count
the right to institute proceedings for libel. Old Chesnel was
walking up the Grande Sue, as if by accident, telling all who
cared to hear him that du Croisier had set the most shameful
snares for the d'Esgrignons' honor, and that it was entirely
owing to the forbearance and magnanimity of the family that
he was not prosecuted for slander.

On the evening of that famous day, after the Marquis
d'Esgrignon had gone to bed, the Count, Mile. Armande, and
the Chevalier were left with the handsome young page, now
about to return to Paris. The charming cavalier's sex could
not be hidden from the Chevalier, and he alone, besides the
three officials and Mme. Camusot, knew that the Duchess had
been among them.

"The house is saved," began Chesnel, ''but after this shock
it will take a hundred years to rise again. The debts must
be paid now; you must marry an heiress, M. le Comte, there
is nothing else left for you to do."

"And take her where you may find her," said the
Duchess.

"A second mesalliance!" exclaimed Mile. Armande.

The Duchess began to laugh.

"It is better to marry than to die," she said. As she spoke
she drew from her waistcoat pocket a tiny crystal phial that
came from the court apothecary.

Mile. Armande shrank away in horror. Old Chesnel took
the fair Maufrigneuse's hand, and kissed it without permis-
sion.

"Are you all out of your minds here?" continued the
Duchess. "Do you really expect to live in the fifteenth cen-
tury when the rest of the world has reached the nineteenth?
My dear children, there is no noblesse nowadays ; there is no
aristocracy left ! Napoleon's Code Civil made an end of the
parchments, exactly as cannon made an end of feudal castles.

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 297

When you have some money, you will be very much more of
nobles than you are now. Marry anybody you please, Vic-
turnien, you will raise your wife to your rank; that is the
most substantial privilege left to the French noblesse. Did
not M. de Talleyrand marry Mme. Grandt without com-
promising his position? Remember that Louis XIV. took
the Widow Scarron for his wife."

"He did not marry her for her money ," interposed Mile.
Armande.

"If the Comtesse d'Esgrignon were one du Croisier's niece,
for instance, would you receive her ?" asked Chesnel.

"Perhaps," replied the Duchess ; "but the King, beyond all
doubt, would be very glad to see her. — So you do not know
what is going on in the world?" continued she, seeing the
amazement in their faces. "Victurnien has been in Paris;
he knows how things go there. We had more influence under
Napoleon. Marry Mile. Duval, Victurnien; she will be just
as much Marquise d'Esgrignon as I am Duchesse de Maufri-
gneuse."

"All is lost — even honor !" said the Chevalier, with a wave
of the hand.

"Good-bye, Victurnien," said the Duchess, kissing her lover
on the forehead ; "we shall not see each other again. Live on
your lands; that is the best thing for you to do; the air of
Paris is not at all good for you."

"Diane !" the young Count cried despairingly.

"Monsieur, you forget yourself strangely," the Duchess
retorted coolly, as she laid aside her role of man and mistress,
and became not merely an angel again, but a duchess, and
not only a duchess, but Moliere's Celimene.

The Duchesse de Maufrigneuse made a stately bow to these
four personages, and drew from the Chevalier his last tear
of admiration at the service of le beau sexe.

"How like she is to the Princess Goritza !" he exclaimed
in a low voice.

Diane had disappeared. The crack of the postilion's whip
told Victurnien that the fair romance of his first love was

298 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

over. While the peril lasted, Diane could still see her lover
in the young Count ; but out of danger, she despised him for
the weakling that he was.

Six months afterwards, Camusot received the appointment
of assistant judge at Paris, and later he became an examin-
ing magistrate. Goodman Blondet was made a councillor
to the Koyal-Court; he held the post just long enough to
secure a retiring pension, and then went back to live in his
pretty little house. Joseph Blondet sat in his father's seat at
the court till the end of his days ; there was not the faintest
chance of promotion for him, but he became Mile. Blan-
durean/'s husband ; and she, no doubt, is leading to-day, in the
little flower-covered brick house, as dull a life as any carp in
a marble basin. Michu and Camusot also received the Cross
of the Legion of Honor, while Blondet became an Officer. As
for M. Sauvager, deputy public prosecutor, he was sent to
Corsica, to du Croisier's great relief; he had decidedly no
mind to bestow his niece upon that functionary.

Du Croisier himself, urged by President du Konceret, ap-
pealed from the finding of the Tribunal to the Court-Royal,
and lost his cause. The Liberals throughout the department
held that little d'Esgrignon was guilty; while the Royalists,
on the other hand, told frightful stories of plots woven by
"that abominable du Croisier" to compass his revenge. A
duel was fought indeed; the hazard of arms favored du
Croisier, the young Count was dangerously wounded, and his
antagonist maintained his words. This affair embittered the
strife between the two parties; the Liberals brought it for-
ward on all occasions. Meanwhile du Croisier never could
carry his election, and saw no hope of marrying his niece to
the Count, especially after the duel.

A month after the decision of the Tribunal was con-
firmed in the Court-Royal, Chesnel died, exhausted by the
dreadful strain, which had weakened and shaken him mentally
and physically. He died in the hour of victory, like some
old faithful hound that has brought the boar to bay, and gets

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 299

his death on the tusks. He died as happily as might be,
seeing that he left the great House all but ruined, and the heir
in penury, bored to death by an idle life, and without a hope
of establishing himself. That bitter thought and his own ex-
haustion, no doubt, hastened the old man's end. One great
comfort came to him as he lay amid the wreck of so many
hopes, sinking under the burden of so many cares — the old
Marquis, at his sister's entreaty, gave him back all the old
friendship. The great lord came to the little house in the
Kue du Bercail, and sat by his old servant's bedside, all un-
aware how much that servant had done and sacrificed for
him. Chesnel sat upright, and repeated Simeon's cry. — The
Marquis allowed them to bury Chesnel in the castle chapel;
they laid him crosswise at the foot of the tomb which was
waiting for the Marquis himself, the last, in a sense, of the
d'Esgrignons.

And so died one of the last representatives of that great
and beautiful thing, Service ; giving to that often discredited
word its original meaning, the relation between feudal lord
and servitor. That relation, only to be found in some out-of-
the-way province, or among a few old servants of the King,
did honor alike to a noblesse that could call forth such affec-
tion, and to a bourgeoisie that could conceive it. Such noble
and magnificent devotion is no longer possible among us.
Noble houses have no servitors left; even as France has no
longer a King, nor an hereditary peerage, nor lands that are
bound irrevocably to an historic house, that the glorious
names of a nation may be perpetuated. Chesnel was not
merely one of the obscure great men of private life; he was
something more — he was a great fact. In his sustained self-
devotion is there not something indefinably solemn and sub-
lime, something that rises above the one beneficent deed, or the
heroic height which is reached by a moment's supreme effort ?
Chesnel's virtues belong essentially to the classes which stand
between the poverty of the people on the one hand, and the
greatness of the aristocracy on the other ; for these can combine
homely burgher virtues with the heroic ideals of the noble,
enlightening both by a solid education,

300 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN

Victurnien was not well looked upon at Court ; there was
no more chance of a great match for him, nor a place.
His Majesty steadily refused to raise the d'Esgrignons to the
peerage, the one royal favor which could rescue Victurnien
from his wretched position. It was impossible that he
should marry a bourgeoise heiress in his father's lifetime, so
he was bound to live on shabbily under the paternal roof with
memories of his two years of splendor in Paris, and the lost
love of a great lady to bear him company. He grew moody
and depressed, vegetating at home with a careworn aunt and a
half heart-broken father, who attributed his son's condition
to a wasting malady. Chesnel was no longer there.

The Marquis died in 1830. The great d'Esgrignon, with
a following of all the less infirm noblesse from the Collection
of Antiquities, went to wait upon Charles X. at Nonancourt ;
he paid his respects to his sovereign, and swelled the meagre
train of the fallen king. It was an act of courage which
seems simple enough to-day, but, in that time of enthusiastic
revolt, it was heroism.

"The Gaul has conquered!" These were the Marquis'
last words.

By that time du Croisier's victory was complete. The
new Marquis d'Esgrignon accepted Mile. Duval as his wife
a week after his old father's death. His bride brought him
three millions of francs, for du Croisier and his wife settled
the reversion of their fortunes upon her in the marriage-con-
tract. Du Croisier took occasion to say during the ceremony
that the d'Esgrignon family was the most honorable of all the
ancient houses in France.

Some day the present Marquis d'Esgrignon will have an in-
come of more than a hundred thousand crowns. You may
see him in Paris, for he comes to town every winter and leads
a jolly bachelor life, while he treats his wife with something
more than the indifference of the grand seigneur of olden
times ; he takes no thought whatever for her.

"As for Mile. d'Esgrignon," said l^mile Blondet, to whom
all the detail of the story is due; "if she is no longer like the

THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN 301

divinely fair woman whom I saw by glimpses in my childhood,
she is decidedly, at the age of sixty-seven, the most pathetic
and interesting figure in the Collection of Antiquities. She
queens it among them still. I saw her when I made my last
journey to my native place in search of the necessary papers
for my marriage. When my father knew who it was that I
had married, he was struck dumb with amazement ; he had not
a word to say until I told him that I was a prefect.

" 'You were born to it/ he said, with a smile.

"As I took a walk around the town, I met Mile. Armande.
She looked taller than ever. I looked at her, and thought of
Marius among the ruins of Carthage. Had she not outlived
her creed, and the beliefs that had been destroyed? She is
a sad and silent woman, with nothing of her old beauty left
except the eyes, that shine with an unearthly light. I
watched her on her way to mass, with her book in her hand,
and could not help thinking that she prayed to God to take
her out of the world."

Lbs Jardies, July 1837.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

Dedicated to Monsieur le Contre-Amiral Bazoche, Governor of the
Isle of Bourbon, by the grateful writer. De Balzac.

In 1828, at about one o'clock one morning, two persons came
out of a large house in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore,
near the Elysee-Bourbon. One was a famous doctor, Horace
Bianchon; the other was one of the most elegant men in
Paris, the Baron de Rastignac; they were friends of long
standing. Each had sent away his carriage, and no cab was
to be seen in the street ; but the night was fine, and the pave-
ment dry.

"We will walk as far as the boulevard," said Eugene de
Rastignac to Bianchon. "You can get a hackney cab at the
club; there is always one to be found there till daybreak.
Come with me as far as my house."

"With pleasure."

"Well, and what have you to say about it?"

"About that woman ?" said the doctor coldly.

"There I recognize my Bianchon!" exclaimed Rastignac.

"Why, how?"

"Well, my dear fellow, you speak of the Marquise d'Espard
as if she were a case for your hospital."

"Do you want to know what I think, Eugene? If you
throw over Madame de Nucingen for this Marquise, you will
swap a one-eyed horse for a blind one."

"Madame de Nucingen is six-and-thirty, Bianchon."

"And this woman is three-and-thirty," said the doctor
quickly.

"Her worst enemies only say six-and-twenty."

"My dear boy, when you really want to know a woman's

age, look at her temples and the tip of her nose. Whatever

women may achieve with their cosmetics, they can do nothing

against those incorruptible witnesses to their experiences.

V0L- 7~42 (303)

304 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

There each year of life has left its stigmata. When a woman's
temples are flaccid, seamed, withered in a particular
way ; when at the tip of her nose yon see those minute specks,
which look like the imperceptible black smuts which are shed
in London by the chimneys in which coal is burnt. . . .
Your servant, sir! That woman is more than thirty. She
may be handsome, witty, loving — whatever you please, but
she is past thirty, she is arriving at maturity. I do not
blame men who attach themselves to that kind of woman;
only, a man of your superior distinction must not mistake a
winter pippin for a little summer apple, smiling on the
bough, and waiting for you to crunch it. Love never goes
to study the registers of birth and marriage; no one loves
a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or clever;
we love because we love."

''Well, for my part, I love for quite other reasons. She is
Marquise d'Espard; she was a Blamont-Chauvry ; she is the
fashion; she has soul; her foot is as pretty as the Duchesse
de Berri's; she has perhaps a hundred thousand francs a
year — some day, perhaps, I may marry her! In short, she
will put me into a position which will enable me to pay my
debts."

"I thought you were rich," interrupted Bianchon.

"Bah ! I have twenty thousand francs a year — just enough
to keep up my stables. I was thoroughly done, my dear fel-
low, in that Nucingen business ; I will tell you about that. —
I have got my sisters married; that is the clearest profit I
can show since we last met; and I would rather have them
provided for than have five hundred thousand francs a year.
!Now, what would you have me do ? I am ambitious. To what
can Madame de Nueingen lead? A year more and I shall
be shelved, stuck in a pigeon-hole like a married man. I
have all the discomforts of marriage and of single life, with-
out the advantages of either; a false position to which every
man must come who remains tied too long to the same apron-
string."

"So you think you will come upon a treasure here?" said

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Bianchon. "Your Marquise, my dear fellow, does not hit
my fancy at all."

"Your liberal opinions blur your eyesight. If Madame
d'Espard were a Madame Rabourdin . . ."

"Listen to me. Noble or simple, she would still have no
soul; she would still be a perfect type of selfishness. Take
my word for it, medical men are accustomed to judge of
people and things ; the sharpest of us read the soul while we
study the body. In spite of that pretty boudoir where we
have spent this evening, in spite of the magnificence of the
house, it is quite possible that Madame la Marquise is in
debt."

"What makes you think so?"

"I do not assert it ; I am supposing. She talked of her soul
as Louis XVIII. used to talk of his heart. I tell you this:
That fragile, fair woman, with her chestnut hair, who pities
herself that she may be pitied, enjoys an iron constitution,
an appetite like a wolf's, and the strength and cowardice of
a tiger. Gauze, and silk, and muslin were never more cleverly
twisted round a lie ! Ecco."

"Bianchon, you frighten me! You have learned a good
many things, then, since we lived in the Maison Vauquer?"

"Yes; since then, my boy, I have seen puppets, both dolls
and manikins. I know something of the ways of the fine
ladies whose bodies we attend to, saving that which is dearest
to them, their child — if they love it — or their pretty faces,
which they always worship. A man spends his nights by
their pillow, wearing himself to death to spare them the
slightest loss of beauty in any part; he succeeds, he keeps
their secret like the dead ; they send to ask for his bill, and
think it horribly exorbitant. Who saved them? Nature.
Far from recommending him, they speak ill of him, fearing
lest he should become the physician of their best friends.

"My dear fellow, those women of whom you say, "They are
angels !' I — I — have seen stripped of the little grimaces under
which they hide their soul, as well as of the frippery under

306 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

which they disguise their defects — without manners and
without stays; they are not beautiful.

icWe saw a great deal of mud, a great deal of dirt, under
the waters of the world when we were aground for a time on
the shoals of the Maison Vauquer. — What we saw there was
nothing. Since I have gone into higher society, I have seen
monsters dressed in satin, Michonneaus in white gloves,
Poirets bedizened with orders, fine gentlemen doing more
usurious business than old Gobseck ! To the shame of man-
kind, when I have wanted to shake hands with Virtue, I have
found her shivering in a loft, persecuted by calumny, half-
starving on an income or a salary of fifteen hundred francs
a year, and regarded as crazy, or eccentric, or imbecile.

"In short, my dear boy, the Marquise is a woman of
fashion, and I have a particular horror of that kind of
woman. Do you want to know why? A woman who has a
lofty soul, fine taste, gentle wit, a generously warm heart, and
who lives a simple life, has not a chance of being the fashion.
'Ergo: A woman of fashion and a man in power are analo-
gous; but there is this difference: the qualities by which a
man raises himself above others ennoble him and are a glory
to him ; whereas the qualities by which a woman gains power
for a day are hideous vices ; she belies her nature to hide her
character, and to live the militant life of the world she must
have iron strength under a frail appearance.

"I, as a physician, know that a sound stomach excludes a
good heart. Your woman of fashion feels nothing; her rage
for pleasure has its source in a longing to heat up her cold
nature, a craving for excitement and enjoyment, like an old
man who stands night after night by the footlights at the
opera. As she has more brain than heart, she sacrifices
genuine passion and true friends to her triumph, as a gen-
eral sends his most devoted subalterns to the front in order
to win a battle. The woman of fashion ceases to be a woman ;
she is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically
speaking, sex in the brain. And your Marquise, too, has all
the characteristics of her monstrosity, the beak of a bird of

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prey, the clear, cold eye, the gentle voice — she is as polished
as the steel of a machine, she touches everything except the
heart."

"There is some truth in what you say, Bianchon."

"Some truth ?" replied Bianchon. "It is all true. Do you
suppose that I was not struck to the heart by the insulting
politeness by which she made me measure the imaginary dis-
tance which her noble birth sets between us? That I did
not feel the deepest pity for her cat-like civilities when I re-
membered what her object was? A year hence she will not
write one word to do me the slightest service, and this even-
ing she pelted me with smiles, believing that I can influence
my uncle Popinot, on whom the success of her case "

"Would you rather she should have played the fool with
you, my dear fellow? — I accept your diatribe against women
of fashion; but you are beside the mark. I should always
prefer for a wife a Marquise d'Espard to the most devout
and devoted creature on earth. Marry an angel ! you would
have to go and bury your happiness in the depths of the coun-
try ! The wife of a politician is a governing machine, a con-
trivance that makes compliments and courtesies. She is the
most important and most faithful tool which an ambitious
man can use; a friend, in short, who may compromise her-
self without mischief, and whom he may belie without harm-
ful results. Fancy Mahomet in Paris in the nineteenth cen-
tury ! His wife would be a Rohan, a Duchesse de Chevreuse
of the Fronde, as keen and as flattering as an Ambassadress,
as wily as Figaro. Your loving wives lead nowhere ; a woman
of the world leads to everything; she is the diamond with
which a man cuts every window when he has not the golden
key which unlocks every door. Leave humdrum virtues to
the humdrum, ambitious vices to the ambitious.

"Besides, my dear fellow, do you imagine that the love of a
Duchesse de Langeais, or de Maufrigneuse, or of a Lady
Dudley does not bestow immense pleasure ? If only you knew
how much value the cold, severe style of such women gives
to the smallest evidence of their affection ! What a delight

308 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

it is to see a periwinkle piercing through the snow ! A smile
from below a fan contradicts the reserve of an assumed at-
titude, and is worth all the unbridled tenderness of your
middle-class women with their mortgaged devotion; for, in
love, devotion is nearly akin to speculation.

"And, then, a woman of fashion, a Blamont-Chauvry, has
her virtues too! Her virtues are fortune, power, effect, a
certain contempt of all that is beneath her "

"Thank you!" said Bianchon.

"Old curmudgeon !" said Eastignac, laughing. "Come —
do not be common ; do like your friend Desplein ; be a Baron,
a Knight of Saint-Michael; become a peer of France, and
marry your daughters to dukes."

"I ! May the five hundred thousand devils "

"Come, come ! Can you be superior only in medicine ?
Eeally, you distress me . . ."

"I hate that sort of people; I long for a revolution to de-
liver us from them for ever."

"And so, my dear Eobespierre of the lancet, you will not
go to-morrow to your uncle Popinot ?"

"Yes, I will," said Bianchon ; "for you I would go to hell
to fetch water . . ."

"My good friend, you really touch me. I have sworn that
a commission shall sit on the Marquis. Why, here is even
a long-saved tear to thank you."

"But," Bianchon went on, "I do not promise to succeed
as you wish with Jean-Jules Popinot. You do not know
him. However, I will take him to see your Marquise the day
after to-morrow ; she may get round him if she can. I doubt
it. If all the truffles, all the Duchesses, all the mistresses,
and all the charmers in Paris were there in the full bloom
of their beauty; if the King promised him the prairie, and
the Almighty gave him the Order of Paradise with the reve-
nues of Purgatory, not one of all these powers would induce
him to transfer a single straw from one saucer of his scales
into the other. He is a judge, as Death is Death."

The two friends had reached the office of the Minister for

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 309

Foreign Affairs, at the corner of the Boulevard des Capu-
cines.

"Here you are at home," said Bianchon, laughing, as he
pointed to the ministerial residence. "And here is my car-
riage," he added, calling a hackney cab. "And these — ex-
press our fortune."'

"You will be happy at the bottom of the sea, while I am
still struggling with the tempests on the surface, till I sink
and go to ask you for a corner in your grotto, old fellow !"

"Till Saturday," replied Bianchon.

"Agreed," said Rastignac. "And you promise me Popi-
not?"

"I will do all my conscience will allow. Perhaps this ap-
peal for a commission covers some little dramorama, to use a
word of our good bad times."

"Poor Bianchon ! he will never be anything but a good fel-
low," said Eastignac to himself as the cab drove off.

"Rastignac has given me the most difficult negotiation in
the world," said Bianchon to himself, remembering, as he
rose next morning, the delicate commission intrusted to him.
"However, I have never asked the smallest service from my
uncle in Court, and have paid more than a thousand visits
gratis for him. And, after all, we are not apt to mince mat-
ters between ourselves. He will say Yes or No, and there an
end."

After this little soliloquy the famous physician bent his
steps, at seven in the morning, towards the Rue du Fouarre,
where dwelt Monsieur Jean- Jules Popinot, judge of the
Lower Court of the Department of the Seine. The Rue du
Fouarre — an old word meaning straw — was in the thirteenth
century the most important street in Paris. There stood the
Schools of the University, where the voices of Abelard and
of Gerson were heard in the world of learning. It is now
one of the dirtiest streets of the Twelfth Arrondissement,
the poorest quarter of Paris, that in which two-thirds of the
population lack firing in winter, which leaves most brats at

310 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

the gate of the Foundling Hospital, which sends most beg-
gars to the poorhouse, most rag-pickers to the street corners,
most decrepit old folks to bask against the walls on which
the sun shines, most delinquents to the police courts.

Half-way down this street, which is always damp, and where
the gutter carries to the Seine the blackened waters from
some dye-works, there is an old house, restored no doubt
under Francis I., and built of bricks held together by a few
courses of masonry. That it is substantial seems proved by
the shape of its front wall, not uncommonly seen in some
parts of Paris. It bellies, so to speak, in a manner caused
by the protuberance of its first floor, crushed under the weight
of the second and third, but upheld by the strong wall of the
ground floor. At first sight it would seem as though the
piers between the windows, though strengthened by the stone
mullions, must give way ; but the observer presently perceives
that, as in the tower at Bologna, the old bricks and old time-
eaten stones of this house persistently preserve their centre of
gravity.

At every season of the year the solid piers of the ground
floor have the yellow tone and the imperceptible sweating sur-
face that moisture gives to stone. The passer-by feels chilled
as he walks close to this wall, where worn corner-stones in-
effectually shelter him from the wheels of vehicles. As is
always the case in houses built before carriages were in use,
the vault of the doorway forms a very low archway not unlike
the barbican of a prison. To the right of this entrance there
are three windows, protected outside by iron gratings of so
close a pattern, that the curious cannot possibly see the use
made of the dark, damp rooms within, and the panes too
are dirty and dusty ; to the left are two similar windows, one
of which is sometimes open, exposing to view the porter,
his wife, and his children; swarming, working, cooking, eat-
ing, and screaming, in a floored and wainscoted room where
everything is dropping to pieces, and into which you descend
two steps — a depth which seems to suggest the gradual eleva-
tion of the soil of Paris.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY Sll

If on a rainy day some foot-passenger takes refuge under
the long vault, with projecting lime-washed beams, which
leads from the door to the staircase, he will hardly fail to
pause and look at the picture presented by the interior of
this house. To the left is a square garden-plot, allowing of not
more than four long steps in each direction, a garden of black
soil, with trellises bereft of vines, and where, in default of
vegetation under the shade of two trees, papers collect, old
rags, potsherds, bits of mortar fallen from the roof ; a barren
ground, where time has shed on the walls, and on the trunks
and branches of the trees, a powdery deposit like cold soot.
The two parts of the house, set at a right angle, derive light
from this garden-court shut in by two adjoining houses built
on wooden piers, decrepit and ready to fall, where on each
floor some grotesque evidence is to be seen of the craft pur-
sued by the lodger within. Here long poles are hung with
immense skeins of dyed worsted put out to dry; there, on
ropes, dance clean-washed shirts ; higher up, on a shelf, vol-
umes display their freshly marbled edges; women sing, hus-
bands whistle, children shout; the carpenter saws his planks,
a copper-turner makes the metal screech ; all kinds of indus-
tries combine to produce a noise which the number of instru-
ments renders distracting.

The general system of decoration in this passage, which is
neither courtyard, garden, nor vaulted way, though a little
of all, consists of wooden pillars resting on square stone
blocks, and forming arches. Two archways open on to the
little garden ; two others, facing the front gateway, lead to a
wooden staircase, with an iron balustrade that was once a
miracle of smith's work, so whimsical are the shapes given
to the metal; the worn steps creak under every tread. The
entrance to each flat has an architrave dark with dirt, grease,
and dust, and outer doors, covered with Utrecht velvet set
with brass nails, once gilt, in a diamond pattern. These relics
of splendor show that in the time of Louis XIV. the house
was the residence of some Councillor to the Parlement, some
rich priests, or some treasurer of the ecclesiastical revenue.

312 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

But these vestiges of former luxury bring a smile to the lips
by the artless contrast of past and present.

M. Jean-Jules Popinot lived on the first floor of this house,
where the gloom, natural to all first floors in Paris ho:
was increased by the narrowness of the street. This old
tenement was known to all the twelfth arrondissement, on
which Providence had bestowed this lawyer, as it gives a
beneficent plant to cure or alleviate every malady. Here is a
sketch of a man whom the brilliant Marquise d'Espard hoped
to fascinate.

M. Popinot, as is seemly for a magistrate, was always
dressed in black — a style which contributed to make him
ridiculous in the eyes of those who were in the habit of judg-
ing everything from a superficial examination. Men who are
jealous of maintaining the dignity required by this color
ought to devote themselves to constant and minute care of
their person ; but our dear M. Popinot was incapable of forc-
ing himself to the puritanical cleanliness which black de-
mands. His trousers, always threadbare, looked like camlet
— the stuff of which attorneys' gowns are made; and his
habitual stoop set them, in time, in such innumerable creases,
that in places they were traced with lines, whitish, rusty, or
shiny, betraying either sordid avarice, or the most unheeding
poverty. His coarse worsted stockings were twisted anyhow
in his ill-shaped shoes. His linen had the tawny tinge
acquired by long sojourn in a wardrobe, showing that the late
lamented Madame Popinot had had a mania for much linen ;
in the Flemish fashion, perhaps, she had given herself the
trouble of a great wash no more than twice a year. The old
man's coat and waistcoat were in harmony with his trousers,
shoes, stockings, and linen. He always had the luck of his
carelessness; for, the first day he put on a new coat, he un-
failingly matched it with the rest of his costume by staining
it with incredible promptitude. The good man waited till
his housekeeper told him that his hat was too shabby before
buying a new one. His necktie was always crumpled and
starchless, and he never set his dog-eared shirt collar straight

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 31?

after his judge's bands had disordered it.. He took no care of
his gray hair, and shaved but twice a week. He never wore
gloves, and generally kept his hands stuffed into his empty
trousers' pockets ; the soiled pocket-holes, almost always too,
added a final touch to the slovenliness of his person.

Any one who knows the Palais de Justice at Paris, where
every variety of black attire may be studied, can easily
imagine the appearance of M. Popinot. The habit of sitting
for days at a time modifies the structure of the body, just as
the fatigue of hearing interminable pleadings tells on the ex-
pression of a magistrate's face. Shut up as he is in courts
ridiculously small, devoid of architectural dignity, and where
the air is quickly vitiated, a Paris judge inevitably acquires
a countenance puckered and seamed by reflection, and de-
pressed by weariness; his complexion turns pallid, acquiring
an earthy or greenish hue according to his individual tem-
perament. In short, within a given time the most blooming
young man is turned into an "inasmuch" machine — an in-
strument which applies the Code to individual cases with the
indifference of clockwork.

Hence, nature having bestowed on M. Popinot a not too
pleasing exterior, his life as a lawyer had not improved it.
His frame was graceless and angular. His thick knees, huge
feet, and broad hands formed a contrast with a priest-like
face having a vague resemblance to a calf's head, meek to
unmeaningness, and but little brightened by divergent,
bloodless eyes, divided by a straight flat nose, surmounted by
a flat forehead, flanked by enormous ears, flabby and grace-
less. His thin, weak hair showed the baldness through
various irregular partings.

One feature only commended this face to the physiog-
nomist. This man had a mouth to whose lips divine kind-
ness lent its sweetness. They were wholesome, full, red lips,
finely wrinkled, sinuous, mobile, by which nature had given
expression to noble feelings; lips which spoke to the heart
and proclaimed the man's intelligence and lucidity, a gift
of second-sight, and a heavenly temper; and you would have

314 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

judged him wrongly from looking merely at his sloping fore-
head, his fireless eyes, and his shambling gait. His life an-
swered to his countenance; it was full of secret labor, and
hid the virtue of a saint. His superior knowledge of law
proved so strong a recommendation at the time when Na-
poleon was reorganizing it in 1808 and 1811, that, by the
advice of Cambaceres, he was one of the first men named to
sit on the Imperial High Court of Justice at Paris. Popi-
not was no schemer. Whenever any demand was made, any
request preferred for an appointment, the Minister would
overlook Popinot, who never set foot in the house of the
High Chancellor or the Chief Justice. From the High Court
he was sent down to the Common Court, and pushed to the
lowest rung of the ladder by active struggling men. There
he was appointed supernumerary judge. There was a general
outcry among the lawyers: "Popinot a supernumerary !"
Such injustice struck the legal world with dismay — the at-
torneys, the registrars, everybody but Popinot himself, who
made no complaint. The first clamor over, everybody was
satisfied that all was for the best in the best of all possible
worlds, which must certainly be the legal world. Popinot
remained supernumerary judge till the day when the most
famous Great Seal under the Restoration avenged the over-
sights heaped on this modest and uncomplaining man by the
Chief Justices of the Empire. After being a supernumerary
for twelve years, M. Popinot would no doubt die a puisne
judge of the Court of the Seine.

To account for the obscure fortunes of one of the superior
men of the legal profession, it is necessary to enter here into
some details which will serve to reveal his life and character,
and which will, at the same time, display some of the wheels
of the great machine known as Justice. M. Popinot was
classed by the three Presidents who successively controlled
the Court of the Seine under the category of possible judges,
the stuff of which judges are made. Thus classified, he did
not achieve the reputation for capacity which his previous
labors had deserved. Just as a painter is invariably included

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 315

in a category as a landscape painter, a portrait painter, a
painter of history, of sea pieces, or of genre, by a public con-
sisting of artists, connoisseurs, and simpletons, who,, out of
envy, or critical omnipotence, or prejudice, fence in his in-
tellect, assuming, one and all, that there are ganglions in
every brain — a narrow judgment which the world applies to
writers, to* statesmen, to everybody who begins with some
specialty before being hailed as omniscient; so Popinot's
fate was sealed, and he was hedged round to do a particular
kind of work. Magistrates, attorneys, pleaders, all who past-
ure on the legal common, distinguish two elements in every
case — law and equity. Equity is the outcome of facts, law
is the application of principles to facts. A man may be right
in equity but wrong in law, without any blame to the judge.
Between his conscience and the facts there is a whole gulf
of determining reasons unknown to the judge, but which con-
demn or legitimatize the act. A judge is not God; his duty
is to adapt facts to principles, to judge cases of infinite va-
riety while measuring them by a fixed standard.

France employs about six thousand judges; no generation
has six thousand great men at her command, much less can
she find them in the legal profession. Popinot, in the midst
of the civilization of Paris, was just a very clever cadi, who,
by the character of his mind, and by dint of rubbing the
letter of the law into the essence of facts, had learned to see
the error of spontaneous and violent decisions. By the help
of his judicial second-sight he could pierce the double casing
of lies in which advocates hide the heart of a trial. He was
a judge, as the great Desplein was a surgeon ; he probed men's
consciences as the anatomist probed their bodies. His life
and habits had led him to an exact appreciation of their most
secret thoughts by a thorough study of facts.

He sifted a case as Cuvier sifted the earth's crust. Like
that great thinker, he proceeded from deduction to deduction
before drawing his conclusions, and reconstructed the
past career of a conscience as Cuvier reconstructed an Ano-
plotherium. When considering a brief he would often wake

316 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

in the night, startled by a gleam of truth suddenly sparkling
in his brain. Struck by the deep injustice, which is the end
of these contests, in which everything is against the honest
man, everything to the advantage of the rogue, he often
summed up in favor of equity against law in such cases as
bore on questions of what may be termed divination. Hence
he was regarded by his colleagues as a man not of a practical
mind; his arguments on two lines of deduction made their
deliberations lengthy. When Popinot observed their dislike
to listening to him he gave his opinion briefly; it was said
that he was not a good judge in this class of cases ; but as his
gift of discrimination was remarkable, his opinion lucid, and
his penetration profound, he was considered to have a special
aptitude for the laborious duties of an examining judge. So
an examining judge he remained during the greater part of
his legal career.

Although his qualifications made him eminently fitted for
its difficult functions, and he had the reputation of being so
learned in criminal law that his duty was a pleasure to him,
the kindness of his heart constantly kept him in torture, and
he was nipped as in a vise between his conscience and his pity.
The services of an examining judge* are better paid than those
of a judge in civil actions, but they do not therefore prove a
temptation; they are too onerous. Popinot, a man of modest
and virtuous learning, without ambition, an indefatigable
worker, never complained of his fate ; he sacrificed his tastes
and his compassionate soul to the public good,and allowed him-
self to be transported to the noisome pools of criminal examina-
tions, where he showed himself alike severe and beneficent. His
clerk sometimes would give the accused some money to buy
tobacco, or a warm winter garment, as he led him back from
the judge's office to the Souriciere, the mouse-trap — the
House of Detention where the accused are kept under the
orders of the Examining Judge. He knew how to be an in-
flexible judge and a charitable man. And no one extracted
a confession so easily as he without having recourse to judicial
trickery. He had, too, all the acumen of an observer. This

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man, apparently so foolishly good-natured, simple, and ab-
sent-minded, could guess all the cunning of a prison wag,
unmask the astutest street huzzy, and subdue a scoundrel.
Unusual circumstances had sharpened his perspicacity; but
to relate these we must intrude on his domestic history, for
in him the judge was the social side of the man; another
man, greater and less known, existed within.

Twelve years before the beginning of this story, in 1816,
during the terrible scarcity which coincided disastrously with
the stay in France of the so-called Allies, Popinot was ap-
pointed President of the Commission Extraordinary formed
to distribute food to the poor of his neighborhood, just when
he had planned to move from the Rue du Fouarre, which he
as little liked to live in as his wife did. The great lawyer,
the clear-sighted criminal judge, whose superiority seemed to
his colleagues a form of aberration, had for five years been
watching legal results without seeing their causes. As he
scrambled up into lofts, as he saw the poverty, as he studied
the desperate necessities which gradually bring the poor to
criminal acts, as he estimated their long struggles, compas-
sion filled his soul The judge then became the Saint Vincent
de Paul of these grown-up children, these suffering toilers.
The transformation was not immediately complete. Benefi-
cence has its temptations as vice has. Charity consumes a
saint's purse, as roulette consumes the possessions of a gam-
bler, quite gradually. Popinot went from misery to misery,
from charity to charity; then, by the time he had lifted
all the rags which cover public pauperism, like a bandage
under which an inflamed wound lies festering, at the end
of a year he had become the Providence incarnate of that
quarter of the town. He was a member of the Benevolent
Committee and of the Charity Organization. Wherever any
gratuitous services were needed he was ready, and did every-
thing without fuss, like the man with the short cloak, who
spends his life in carrying soup round the markets and other
places where there are starving folks.

Popinot was fortunate in acting on a larger circle and in

318 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

a higher sphere; he had an eye on everything, he prevented
crime, he gave work to the unemployed, he found a refuge
for the helpless, he distributed aid with discernment wherever
danger threatened, he made himself the counselor of the
widow, the protector of homeless children, the sleeping part-
ner of small traders. No one at the Courts, no one in Paris,
knew of this secret life of Popinot's. There are virtues so
splendid that they necessitate obscurity; men make haste to
hide them under a bushel. As to those whom the lawyer suc-
cored, they, hard at work all day and tired at night, were
little able to sing his praises ; theirs was the gracelessness of
children, who can never pay because they owe too much.
There is such compulsory ingratitude; but what heart that
has sown good to reap gratitude can think itself great ?

By the end of the second year of his apostolic work, Popi-
not had turned the storeroom at the bottom of his house into
a parlor, lighted by the three iron-barred windows. The
walls and ceiling of this spacious room were whitewashed,
and the furniture consisted of wooden benches like those seen
in schools, a clumsy cupboard, a walnut-wood writing-table,
and an armchair. In the cupboard were his registers of
donations, his tickets for orders for bread, and his diary. He
kept his ledger like a tradesman, that he might not be ruined
by kindness. All the sorrows of the neighborhood were en-
tered and numbered in a book, where each had its little ac-
count, as merchants' customers have theirs. When there was
any question as to a man or a family needing help, the law-
yer could always command information from the police.

Lavienne, a man made for his master, was his aide-de-
camp. He redeemed or renewed pawn-tickets, and visited the
districts most threatened with famine, while his master was
in court.

From four till seven in the morning in summer, from six
till nine in winter, this room was full of women, children,
and paupers, while Popinot gave audience. There was no
need for a stove in winter; the crowd was so dense that the
air was warmed ; only, Lavienne strewed straw on the wet

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 319

floor. By long use the benches were as polished as varnished
mahogany; at the height of a man's shoulders the wall had
a coat of dark, indescribable color, given to it by the rags and
tattered clothes of these poor creatures. The poor wretches
loved Popinot so well that when they assembled before his
door was opened, before daybreak on a winter's morning, the
women warming themselves with their foot-brasiers, the men
swinging their arms for circulation, never a sound had dis-
turbed his sleep. Rag-pickers and other toilers of the night
knew the house, and often saw a light burning in the lawyer's
private room at unholy hours. Even thieves, as they passed
by, said, "That is his house," and respected it. The morning
he gave to the poor, the mid-day hours to criminals, the even-
ing to law work.

Thus the gift of observation that characterized Popinot
was necessarily bifrons; he could guess the virtues of a pauper
— good feelings nipped, fine actions in embryo, unrecognized
self-sacrifice, just as he could read at the bottom of a man's
conscience the faintest outlines of a crime, the slenderest
threads of wrongdoing, and infer all the rest.

Popinot's inherited fortune was a thousand crowns a year.
His wife, sister to M. Bianchon senior, a doctor at Sancerre,
had brought him about twice as much. She, dying five years
since, had left her fortune to her husband. As the salary of
a supernumerary judge is not large, and Popinot had been a
fully salaried judge only for four years, we may guess his rea-
sons for parsimony in all that concerned his person and mode
of life, when we consider how small his means were and how
great his beneficence. Besides, is not such indifference to
dress as stamped Popinot an absent-minded man, a distin-
guishing mark of scientific attainment, of art passionately
pursued, of a perpetually active mind? To complete this
portrait, it will be enough to add that Popinot was one of
the few judges of the Court of the Seine on whom the rib-
bon of the Legion of Honor had not been conferred.

Such was the man who had been instructed by the Presi-
dent of the Second Chamber of the Court — to which Popinot
vol. 7—43

320 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

had belonged since his reinstatement among the judges in
civil law — to examine the Marquis d'Espard at the request of
his wife, who sued for a Commission in Lunacy.

The Eue du Fouarre, where so many unhappy wretches
swarmed in the early morning, would be deserted by nine
o'clock, and as gloomy and squalid as ever. Bianchon put
his horse to a trot in order to find his uncle in the midst of
his business. It was not without a smile that he thought of
the curious contrast the judge's appearance would make in
Madame d'Espard's room; but he promised himself that he
would persuade him to dress in a way that should not be too
ridiculous.

"If only my uncle happens to have a new coat !" said
Bianchon to himself, as he turned into the Rue du Fouarre,
where a pale light shone from the parlor windows. "I shall
do well, I believe, to talk that over with Lavienne."

At the sound of wheels half a score of startled paupers
came out from under the gateway, and took off their hats
on recognizing Bianchon; for the doctor, who treated gra-
tuitously the sick recommended to him by the lawj-er, was
not less well known than he to the poor creatures assembled
there.

Bianchon found his uncle in the middle of the parlor,
where the benches were occupied by patients presenting such
grotesque singularities of costume as would have made the
least artistic passer-by turn round to gaze at them. A
draughtsman — a Rembrandt, if there were one in our day —
might have conceived of one of his finest compositions from
seeing these children of misery, in artless attitudes, and all
silent.

Here was the rugged countenance of an old man with a
white beard and an apostolic head — a Saint Peter ready to
hand; his chest, partly uncovered, showed salient muscles,
the evidence of an iron constitution which had served him
as a fulcrum to resist a whole poem of sorrows. There a
young woman was suckling her youngest-born to keep it from
crying, while another of about five stood between her knees.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 321

Her white bosom, gleaming amid rags, the baby with its
transparent flesh-tints, and the brother, whose attitude prom-
ised a street arab in the future, touched the fancy with pathos
by its almost graceful contrast with the long row of faces
crimson with cold, in the midst of which sat this family
group. Further away, an old woman, pale and rigid, had the
repulsive look of rebellious pauperism, eager to avenge all
its past woes in one day of violence.

There, again, was the young workman, weakly and in-
dolent, whose brightly intelligent eye revealed fine faculties
crushed by necessity struggled with in vain, saying nothing
of his sufferings, and nearly dead for lack of an opportunity
to squeeze between the bars of the vast stews where the
wretched swim round and round and devour each other.

The majority were women; their husbands, gone to their
work, left it to them, no doubt, to plead the cause of the
family with the ingenuity which characterizes the woman of
the people, who is almost always queen in her hovel. You
would have seen a torn bandana on every head, on every form
a skirt deep in mud, ragged kerchiefs, worn and dirty jackets,
but eyes that burnt like live coals. It was a horrible assem-
blage, raising at first sight a feeling of disgust, but giving
a certain sense of terror the instant you perceived that the
resignation of these souls, all engaged in the struggle for
every necessary of life, was purely fortuitous, a speculation
on benevolence. The two tallow candles which lighted the
parlor flickered in a sort of fog caused by the fetid atmos-
phere of the ill-ventilated room.

The magistrate himself was not the least picturesque figure
in the midst of this assembly. He had on his head a rusty
cotton night-cap; as he had no cravat, his neck was visible,
red with cold and wrinkled, in contrast with the threadbare
collar of his old dressing-gown. His worn face had the half-
stupid look that comes of absorbed attention. His lips, like
those of all men who work, were puckered up like a bag with
the strings drawn tight. His knitted brows seemed to bear
the burden of all the sorrows confided to him: he felt,

322 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

analyzed, and judged them all. As watchful as a Jew money-
lender, he never raised his eyes from his books and regis-
ters but to look into the very heart of the persons he was
examining, with the flashing glance by which a miser ex-
presses his alarm.

Lavienne, standing behind his master, ready to carry out
his orders, served no doubt as a sort of police, and welcomed
newcomers by encouraging them to get over their shyness.
When the doctor appeared there was a stir on the benches.
Lavienne turned his head, and was strangely surprised to see
Bianchon.

"Ah ! It is you, old boy !" exclaimed Popinot, stretching
himself. "What brings you so early?"

"I was afraid lest you should make an official visit about
which I wish to speak to you before I could see you."

"Well," said the lawyer, addressing a stout little woman
who was still standing close to him, "if you do not tell me
what it is you want, I cannot guess it, child."

"Make haste," said Lavienne. "Do not waste other people's
time."

"Monsieur," said the woman at last, turning red, and
speaking so low as only to be heard by Popinot and Lavienne,
"I have a green-grocery truck, and I have my last baby out at
nurse, and I owe for his keep. Well, I had hidden my little
bit of money "

"Yes ; and your man took it ?" said Popinot, guessing the
sequel.

"Yes, sir."

"What is your name ?"

"La Pomponne."

"And your husband's?"

"Toupinet."
" "Rue du Petit-Banquier ?" said Popinot, turning over his
register. "He is in prison," he added, reading a note at the
margin of the section in which this family was described.

"For debt, my kind monsieur."

Popinot shook his head.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 32.°,

"But I have nothing to buy any stock for my truck; the
landlord came yesterday and made me pay up; otherwise I
should have been turned out."

Lavienne bent over his master, and whispered in his ear.

"Well, how much do you want to buy fruit in the mar-
ket?"

"Why, my good monsieur, to carry on my business, I should
want — Yes, I should certainly want ten francs."

Popinot signed to Lavienne, who took ten francs out of
a large bag, and handed them to the woman, while the law-
yer made a note of the loan in his ledger. As he saw the
thrill of delight that made the poor hawker tremble, Bian-
chon understood the apprehensions that must have agitated
her on her way to the lawyer's house.

"You next," said Lavienne to the old man with the white
beard.

Bianchon drew the servant aside, and asked him how long
this audience would last.

"Monsieur has had two hundred persons this morning, and
there are eighty to be turned off," said Lavienne. "You will
have time to pay your early visit, sir."

"Here, my boy," said the lawyer, turning round and taking
Horace by the arm; "here are two addresses near this — one
in the Eue de Seine, and the other in the Rue de l'Arbalete.
Go there at once. Eue de Seine, a young girl has just
asphyxiated herself; and Rue de l'Arbalete, you will find a
man to remove to your hospital. I will wait breakfast for
you."

Bianchon returned an hour later. The Rue du Fouarre
was deserted; day was beginning to dawn there; his uncle
had gone up to his rooms ; the last poor wretch whose misery
the judge had relieved was departing, and Lavienne's money
bag was empty.

"Well, how are they going on?" asked the old lawyer, as
the doctor came in.

"The man is dead," replied Bianchon; "the girl will get
over it."

324 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

Since the eye and hand of a woman had been lacking, the
flat in which Popinot lived had assumed an aspect in har-
mony with its master's. The indifference of a man who is
absorbed in one dominant idea had set its stamp of eccen-
tricity on everything. Everywhere lay unconquerable dust,
every object was adapted to a wrong purpose with a per-
tinacity suggestive of a bachelor's home. There were papers
in the flower vases, empty ink-bottles on the tables, plates
that had been forgotten, matches used as tapers for a minute
when something had to be found, drawers or boxes half-
turned out and left unfinished; in short, all the confusion
and vacancies resulting from plans for order never carried
out. The lawyer's private room, especially disordered by this
incessant rummage, bore witness to his unresting pace, the
hurry of a man overwhelmed with business, hunted by contra-
dictory necessities. The bookcase looked as if it had been
sacked; there were books scattered over everything, some
piled up open, one on another, others on the floor face down-
wards; registers of proceedings laid on the floor in rows,
lengthwise, in front of the shelves; and that floor had not
been polished for two years.

The tables and shelves were covered with ex votos, the of-
ferings of the grateful poor. On a pair of blue glass jars
which ornamented the chimney-shelf there were two glass
balls, of which the core was made up of many-colored frag-
ments, giving them the appearance of some singular natural
product. Against the wall hung frames of artificial flowers,
and decorations in which Popinot's initials were surrounded
by hearts and everlasting flowers. Here were boxes of
elaborate and useless cabinet work; there letter-weights
carved in the style of work done by convicts in penal servi-
tude. These masterpieces of patience, enigmas of gratitude,
and withered bouquets gave the lawyer's room the appearance
of a toyshop. The good man used these works of art as hid-
ing-places which he filled with bills, worn-out pens, and
scraps of paper. All these pathetic witnesses to his divine
charity were thick with dust, dingy, and faded.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 225

Some birds, beautifully stuffed, but eaten by moth, perched
in this wilderness of trumpery, presided over by an Angora
cat, Madame Popinot's pet, restored to her no doubt with all
the graces of life by some impecunious naturalist, who thus
repaid a gift of charity with a perennial treasure. Some local
artist whose heart had misguided his brush had painted por-
traits of M. and Madame Popinot. Even in the bedroom
there were embroidered pin-cushions, landscapes in cross-
stitch, and crosses in folded paper, so elaborately cockled as
to show the senseless labor they had cost.

The window-curtains were black with smoke, and the hang-
ings absolutely colorless. Between the fireplace and the
large square table at which the magistrate worked, the cook
had set two cups of coffee on a small table, and two armchairs,
in mahogany and horsehair, awaited the uncle and nephew.
As daylight, darkened by the windows, could not penetrate
to this corner, the cook had left two dips burning, whose un-
snuffed wicks showed a sort of mushroom growth, giving the
red light which promises length of life to the candle from
slowness of combustion — a discovery due to some miser.

"My dear uncle, you ought to wrap yourself more warmly
when you go down to that parlor."

"I cannot bear to keep them waiting, poor souls! — Well,
and what do you want of me?"

"I have come to ask to you to dine to-morrow with the Mar-
quise d'Espard."

"A relation of ours?" asked Popinot, with such genuine
absence of mind that Bianchon laughed.

"No, uncle; the Marquise d'Espard is a high and puissant
lady, who has laid before the Courts a petition desiring that
a Commission in Lunacy should sit on her husband, and
you are appointed "

"And you want me to dine with her ! Are you mad ?" said
the lawyer, taking up the code of proceedings. "Here, only
read this article, prohibiting any magistrate's eating or drink-
ing in the house of either of two parties whom he is called
upon to decide between. Let her come and see me, your Mar-

326 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

quise, if she has anything to say to me. I was, in fact, to go
to examine her husband to-morrow, after working the case
up to-night."

He rose, took up a packet of papers that lay under a weight
where he could see it, and after reading the title, he said:

"Here is the affidavit. Since you take an interest in this
high and puissant lady, let us see what she wants."

Popinot wrapped his dressing-gown across his body, from
which it was constantly slipping and leaving his chest bare;
he sopped his bread in the half-cold coffee, and opened the
petition, which he read, allowing himself to throw in a paren-
thesis now and then, and some discussions, in which his
nephew took part : —

" 'To Monsieur the President of the Civil Tribunal of the
Lower Court of the Department of the Seine, sitting at the
Palais de Justice.

" 'Madame Jeanne Clementine Athenais de Blamont-
Chauvry, wife of M. Charles Maurice Marie Andoche, Comte |
de Negrepelisse, Marquis d'Espard' — a very good family —
^landowner, the said Mme. d'Espard living in the Rue du '
Faubourg Saint-Honore, No. 104, and the said M. d'Espard
in the Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, No. 22,' — to <
be sure, the President told me he lived in this part of the
town— 'having for her solicitor Maitre Desroches' — Des-
roches ! a pettifogging jobber, a man looked down upon by
his brother lawyers, and who does his clients no good "

"Poor fellow !" said Bianchon, "unluckily he has no money,
and he rushes round like the devil in holy water — That is
all."

" 'Has the honor to submit to you, Monsieur the President,
that for a year past the moral and intellectual powers of her
husband, M. d'Espard, have undergone so serious a change,
that at the present day they have reached the state of de-
mentia and idiocy provided for by Article 448 of the Civil
Code, and require the application of the remedies set forth
by that article, for the security of his fortune and his person,
and to guard the interest of his children whom he keeps to
live with him.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 327

" 'That, in point of fact, the mental condition of M.
d'Espard, which for some years has given grounds for alarm
based on the system he has pursued in the management of his
affairs, has reached, during the last twelvemonth, a deplor-
able depth of depression; that his infirm will was the first
thing to show the results of the malady; and that its effete
state leaves M. the Marquis d'Espard exposed to all the perils
of his incompetency, as is proved by the following facts :

" 'For a long time all the income accruing from M.
d'Espard's estates are paid, without any reasonable cause,
or even temporary advantage, into the hands of an old woman,
whose repulsive ugliness is generally remarked on, named
Madame Jeanrenaud, living sometimes in Paris, Rue de la
Vrilliere, No. 8, sometimes at Villeparisis, near Claye, in the
Department of Seine et Marne, and for the benefit of her
son, aged thirty-six, an officer in the ex-Imperial Guards,
whom the Marquis d'Espard has placed by his influence in
the King's Guards, as Major in the First Regiment of
Cuirassiers. These two persons, who in 1814 were in extreme
poverty, have since then purchased house-property of con-
siderable value; among other items, quite recently, a large
house in the Grande Rue Verte, where the said Jeanrenaud
is laying out considerable sums in order to settle there with
the woman Jeanrenaud, intending to marry; these sums
amount already to more than a hundred thousand francs.
The marriage has been arranged by the intervention of M.
d'Espard with his banker, one Mongenod, whose niece he has
asked in marriage for the said Jeanrenaud, promising to
use his influence to procure him the title and dignity of
Baron. This has in fact been secured by His Majesty's letters
patent, dated December 29th of last year, at the request of the
Marquis d'Espard, as can be proved by His Excellency the
Keeper of the Seals, if the Court should think proper to re-
quire his testimony.

" 'That no reason, not even such as morality and the law
would concur in disapproving, can justify the influence which
the said Mme. Jeanrenaud exerts over M. d'Espard, who,

328 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

indeed, sees her very seldom; nor account for his strange af-
fection for the said Baron Jeanrenaud, Major, with whom he
has but little intercourse. And yet their power is so con-
siderable, that whenever they need money, if only to gratify

a mere whim, this lady, or her son ' Heh, heh ! no reason

even such as morality and the law concur in disapproving !
What does the clerk or the attorney mean to insinuate ?" said
Popinot.

Bianchon laughed.

" "This lady, or her son, obtain whatever they ask of the
Marquis d'Espard without demur; and if he has not ready
money, M. d'Espard draws bills to be paid by the said Mon-
genod, who has offered to give evidence to that effect for the
petitioner.

" 'That, moreover, in further proof of these facts, latety,
on the occasion of the renewal of the leases on the Espard
estate, the farmers having paid a considerable premium for
the renewal of their leases on the old terms, M. Jeanrenaud
at once secured the payment of it into his own hands.

" 'That the Marquis d'Espard parts with these sums of
money so little of his own free-will, that when he was spoken
to on the subject he seemed to remember nothing of the
matter ; that whenever anybody of any weight has questioned
him as to his devotion to these two persons, his replies have
shown so complete an absence of ideas and of sense of his own
interests, that there obviously must be some occult cause at
work to which the petitioner begs to direct the eye of justice,
inasmuch as it is impossible but that this cause should be
criminal, malignant, and wrongful, or else of a nature to
come under medical jurisdiction; unless this influence is
of the kind which constitutes an abuse of moral power — such

as can only be described by the word possession ' The

devil !" exclaimed Popinot. "What do you say to that, doc-
tor? These are strange statements."

"They might certainly/' said Bianchon, "be an effect of
magnetic force."

"Then do you believe in Mesmer's nonsense, and his tub,
and seeing through walls?"

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 329

"Yes, uncle," said the doctor gravely. "As I heard you
read that petition I thought of that. I assure you that I have
verified, in another sphere of action, several analogous facts
proving the unlimited influence one man may acquire over
another. In contradiction to the opinion of my brethren, I
am perfectly convinced of the power of the will regarded as
a motor force. All collusion and charlatanism apart, I have
seen the results of such a possession. Actions promised dur-
ing sleep by a magnetized patient to the magnetizer have been
scrupulously performed on waking. The will of one had be-
come the will of the other.5'

"Every kind of action?"

"Yes."

"Even a criminal act?"

"Even a crime."

"If it were not from you, I would not listen to such a
thing."

"I will make you witness it," said Bianchon.

"Hm, hm," muttered the lawyer. "But supposing that this
so-called possession fell under this class of facts, it would be
difficult to prove it as legal evidence."

"If this woman Jeanrenaud is so hideously old and ugly,
I do not see what other means of fascination she can have
used," observed Bianchon.

"But," observed the lawyer, "in 1814, the time at which
this fascination is supposed to have taken place, this woman
was fourteen years younger; if she had been connected with
M. d'Espard ten years before that, these calculations take us
back four-and-twenty years, to a time when the lady may
have been young and pretty, and have won for herself and
her son a power over M. d'Espard which some men do not
know how to evade. Though the source of this power is
reprehensible in the sight of justice, it is justifiable in the eye
of nature. Madame Jeanrenaud may have been aggrieved
by the marriage, contracted probably at about that time, be-
tween the Marquis d'Espard and Mademoiselle de Blamont-
Chauvry, and at the bottom of all this there may be nothing

330 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

more than the rivalry of two women, since the Marquis has
for a long time lived apart from Mme. d'Espard."

"But her repulsive ugliness, uncle ?"

"Power of fascination is in direct proportion to ugliness,"
said the lawyer ; "that is an old story. And then think of the
smallpox, doctor. But to proceed.

" 'That so long ago as in 1815, in order to supply the sums
of money required by these two persons, the Marquis d'Espard
went with his two children to live in the Eue de la Montagne-
Sainte-Genevieve, in rooms quite unworthy of his name and
rank' — well, we may live as we please — 'that he keeps his
two .children there, the Comte Clement d'Espard and
Vicomte Camille d'Espard, in a style of living quite unsuited
to their future prospects, their name and fortune; that he
often wants money, to such a point, that not long since the
landlord, one Mariast, put in an execution on the furniture
in the rooms; that when this execution was carried out in
his presence, the Marquis d'Espard helped the bailiff, whom
he treated like a man of rank, paying him all the marks of
attention and respect which he would have shown to a person
of superior birth and dignity to himself.' "

The uncle and nephew glanced at each other and laughed.

" 'That, moreover, every act of his life, besides the facts
with reference to the widow Jeanrenaud and the Baron Jean-
renaud, her son, are those of a madman; that for nearly ten
years he has given his thoughts exclusively to China, its
customs, manners, and history; that he refers everything to
a Chinese origin; that when he is questioned on the subject,
he confuses the events of the day and the business of yester-
day with facts relating to China; that he censures the acts
of the Government and the conduct of the King, though he
is personally much attached to him, by comparing them with
the politics of China;

" 'That this monomania has driven the Marquis d'Espard
to conduct devoid of all sense: against the customs of men
of rank, and, in opposition to his own professed ideas as to
the duties of the nobility, he has joined a commercial under-

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY S3J

taking, for which he constantly draws bills which, as they
fall due, threaten both his honor and his fortune, since they
stamp him as a trader, and in default of payment may lead
to his being declared insolvent; that these debts, which are
owing to stationers, printers, lithographers, and print-color-
ists, who have supplied the materials for his publication,
called A Picturesque History of China, now coming out in
parts, are so heavy that these tradesmen have requested the
petitioner to apply for a Commission in Lunacy with regard
to the Marquis d'Espard in order to save their own credit/ "

"The man is mad !" exclaimed Bianchon.

"You think so, do you ?" said his uncle. "If you listen to
only one bell, you hear only one sound."

"But it seems to me " said Bianchon.

"But it seems to me," said Popinot, "that if any relation
of mine wanted to get hold of the management of my affairs,
and if, instead of being a humble lawyer, whose colleagues
can, any day, verify what this condition is, I were a duke
of the realm, an attorney with a little cunning, like
Desroches, might bring just such a petition against me.

" 'That his children's education has been neglected for this
monomania; and that he has taught them, against all the
rules of education, the facts of Chinese history, which con-
tradict the tenets of the Catholic Church. He also has them
taught the Chinese dialects.' "

"Here Desroches strikes me as funny," said Bianchon.

"The petition is drawn up by his head-clerk Godeschal,
who, as you know, is not strong in Chinese," said the lawyer.

" 'That he often leaves his children destitute of the most
necessary things ; that the petitioner, notwithstanding her en-
treaties, can never see them ; that the said Marquis d'Espard
brings them to her only once a year; that, knowing the
privations to which they are exposed, she makes vain efforts
to give them the things most necessary for their existence,

and which they require ' Oh ! Madame la Marquise, this

is preposterous. By proving too much you prove nothing. —
My dear boy," said the old man, laying the document on his

332 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

knee, "where is the mother who ever lacked heart and wit
and yearning to such a degree as to fall below the inspirations
suggested by her animal instinct? A mother is as cunning
to get at her children as a girl can be in the conduct of a
love intrigue. If your Marquise really wanted to give her
children food and clothes, the Devil himself would not have
hindered her, heh ? That is rather too big a fable for an old
lawyer to swallow ! — To proceed.

" 'That at the age the said children have now attained it
is necessary that steps should be taken to preserve them from
the evil effects of such an education; that they should be
provided for as beseems their rank, and that they should
cease to have before their eyes the sad example of their
father's conduct;

" 'That there are proofs in support of these allegations
which the Court can easily order to be produced. Many times
has M. d'Espard spoken of the judge of the Twelfth Arron-
dissement as a mandarin of the third class; he often speaks
of the professors of the College Henri IV. as "men of let-
ters" ' — and that offends them ! 'In speaking of the simplest
things, he says, "They were not done so in China;" in the
course of the most ordinary conversation he will sometimes
allude to Madame Jeanrenaud, or sometimes to events which
happened in the time of Louis XIV., and then sit plunged
in the darkest melancholy; sometimes he fancies he is in
China. Several of his neighbors, among others one Edme
Becker, medical student, and Jean Baptiste Fremiot, a pro-
fessor, living under the same roof, are of opinion, after fre-
quent intercourse with the Marquis d'Espard, that his mono-
mania with regard to everything Chinese is the result of a
scheme laid by the said Baron Jeanrenaud and the widow his
mother to bring about the deadening of all the Marquis
-d'Espard's mental faculties, since the only service which
Mme. Jeanrenaud appears to render M. d'Espard is to pro-
cure him everything that relates to the Chinese Empire;

" 'Finally, that the petitioner is prepared to show to the
Court that the moneys absorbed by the said Baron and Mme.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 333

Jeanrenaud between 1814 and 1828 amount to not less than
one million francs.

" 'In confirmation of the facts herein set forth, the peti-
tioner can bring the evidence of persons who are in the habit
of seeing the Marquis d'Espard, whose names and profes-
sions are subjoined, many of whom have urged her to de-
mand a commission in lunacy to declare M. d'Espard in-
capable of managing his own affairs, as being the only way
to preserve his fortune from the effects of his maladministra-
tion and his children from his fatal influence.

" 'Taking all this into consideration, M. le President, and
the affidavits subjoined, the petitioner desires that it may
please you, inasmuch as the foregoing facts sufficiently prove
the insanity and incompetency of the Marquis d'Espard
herein described with his titles and residence, to order that,
to the end that he may be declared incompetent by law, this
petition and the documents in evidence may be laid before
the King's public prosecutor; and that you will charge one
of the judges of this Court to make his report to you on any
day you may be pleased to name, and thereupon to pro-
nounce judgment/ etc.

"And here/' said Popinot, "is the President's order in-
structing me ! — Well, what does the Marquise d'Espard want
with me? I know everything. But I shall go to-morrow
with my registrar to see M. le Marquis, for this does not seem
at all clear to me."

"Listen, my dear uncle, I have never asked the least little
favor of you that had to do with your legal functions; well,
now I beg you to show Madame d'Espard the kindness which
her situation deserves. I± she came here, you would listen to
her?"

*<Yes."

"Well, then, go and listen to her in her own house.
Madame d'Espard is a sickly, nervous, delicate woman, who
would faint in your rat-hole of a place. Go in the evening,
instead of accepting her dinner, since the law forbids your
eating or drinking at your client's expense,"

334 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

"And does not the law forbid you from taking any legacy
from your dead?" said Popinot, fancying that he saw a
touch of irony on his nephew's lips.

"Come, uncle, if it were only to enable you to get at the
truth of this business, grant my request. You will come as
the examining judge, since matters do not seem to you very
clear. Deuce take it ! It is as necessary to cross-question the
Marquise as it is to examine the Marquis."

"You are right," said the lawyer. "It is quite possible
that it is she who is mad. I will go."

"I will call for you. Write down in your engagement
book: 'To-morrow evening at nine, Madame d'Espard.' —
Good !" said Bianchon, seeing his uncle make a note of the
engagement.

Next evening at nine Bianchon mounted his uncle's dusty
staircase, and found him at work on the statement of some
complicated judgment. The coat Lavienne had ordered of
the tailor had not been sent, so Popinot put on his old stained
coat, and was the Popinot unadorned whose appearance made
those laugh who did not know the secrets of his private life.
Bianchon, however, obtained permission to pull his cravat
straight, and to button his coat, and he hid the stains by
crossing the breast of it with the right side over the left, and
so displaying the new front of the cloth. But in a minute
the judge rucked the coat up over his chest by the way in
which he stuffed his hands into his pockets, obeying an ir-
resistible habit. Thus the coat, deeply wrinkled both in front
and behind, made a sort of hump in the middle of the back,
leaving a gap between the waistcoat and trousers through
which his shirt showed. Bianchon, to his sorrow, only dis-
covered this crowning absurdity at the moment when his
uncle entered the Marquise's room.

A brief sketch of the person and the career of the lady
in whose presence the doctor and the judge now found them-
selves is necessary for an understanding of her interview
with Popinot.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 335

Madame d'Espard had, for the last seven years, been very
much the fashion in Paris, where Fashion can raise and drop
by turns various personages who, now great and now small,
that is to say, in view or forgotten, are at last quite intoler-
able— as discarded ministers are, and every kind of decayed
sovereignty. These flatterers of the past, odious with their
stale pretensions, know everything, speak ill of everything,
and, like ruined profligates, are friends with all the world.
Since her husband had separated from her in 1815, Madame
d'Espard must have married in the beginning of 1812. Her
children, therefore, were aged respectively fifteen and thir-
teen. By what luck was the mother of a family, about three-
and-thirty years of age, still the fashion ?

Though Fashion is capricious, and no one can foresee who
shall be her favorites, though she often exalts a banker's wife,
or some woman of very doubtful elegance and beauty, it cer-
tainly seems supernatural when Fashion puts on constitu-
tional airs and gives promotion for age. But in this case
Fashion had done as the world did, and accepted Madame
d'Espard as still young.

The Marquise, who was thirty-three by her register of
birth, was twenty-two in a drawing-room in the evening.
But by what care, what artifice ! Elaborate curls shaded her
temples. She condemned herself to live in twilight, affecting
illness so as to sit under the protecting tones of light filtered
through muslin. Like Diane de Poitiers, she used cold water
in her bath, and, like her again, the Marquise slept on a horse-
hair mattress, with morocco-covered pillows to preserve her
hair; she ate very little, only drank water, and observed mo-
nastic regularity in the smallest actions of her life.

This severe system has, it is said, been carried so far as to

the use of ice instead of water, and nothing but cold food, by a

famous Polish lady of our day who spends a life, now verging

on a century old, after the fashion of a town belle. Fated to

live as long as Marion Delorme, whom history has credited

with surviving to be a hundred and thirty, the old vice-queen

of Poland, at the age of nearly a hundred, has the heart and
vol. 7—44

336 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

brain of youth, a charming face, an elegant shape; and in
her conversation, sparkling with brilliancy like faggots in the
fire, she can compare the men and books of our literature
with the men and books of the eighteenth century. Living
in Warsaw, she orders her caps of Herbault in Paris. She is
a great lady with the amiability of a mere girl; she swims,
she runs like a schoolboy, and can sink on to a sofa with the
grace of a young coquette; she mocks at death, and laughs
at life. After having astonished the Emperor Alexander,
she can still amaze the Emperor Nicholas by the splendor of
her entertainments. She can still bring tears to the eyes of
a youthful lover, for her age is whatever she pleases, and
she has the exquisite self-devotion of a grisette. In short,
she is herself a fairy tale, unless, indeed, she is a fairy.

Had Madame d'Espard known Madame Zayonseck? Did
she mean to imitate her career? Be that as it may, the
Marquise proved the merits of the treatment ; her complexion
was clear, her brow unwrinkled, her figure, like that of Henri
II.'s lady-love, preserved the litheness, the freshness, the cov-
ered charms which bring a woman love and keep it alive.
The simple precautions of this course, suggested by art and
nature, and perhaps by experience, had met in her with a
general system which confirmed the results. The Marquise
was absolutely indifferent to everything that was not herself :
men amused her, but no man had ever caused her those deep
agitations which stir both natures to their depths, and wreck
one on the other. She knew neither hatred nor love. When
she was offended, she avenged herself coldly, quietly, at her
leisure, waiting for the opportunity to gratify the ill-will
she cherished against anybody who dwelt in her unfavorable
remembrance. She made no fuss, she did not excite herself;
she talked, because she knew that by two words a woman
•may cause the death of three men.

She had parted from M. d'Espard with the greatest satis-
faction. Had he not taken with him two children who at
present were troublesome, and in the future would stand in
the way of her pretensions? Her most intimate friends, as

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 337

much as her least persistent admirers, seeing about her none
of Cornelia's jewels, who come and go, and unconsciously
betray their mother's age, took her for quite a young woman.
The two boys, about whom she seemed so anxious in her
petition, were, like their father, as unknown in the world
as the northwest passage is unknown to navigators. M.
d'Espard was supposed to be an eccentric personage who had
deserted his wife without having the smallest cause for
complaint against her.

Mistress of herself at two-and-twenty, and mistress of her
fortune of twenty-six thousand francs a year, the Marquise
hesitated long before deciding on a course of action and
ordering her life. Though she benefited by the expenses
her husband had incurred in his house, though she had all
the furniture, the carriages, the horses, in short, all the
details of a handsome establishment, she lived a retired life
during the years 1816, 17, and 18, a time when families were
recovering from the disasters resulting from political tem-
pests. She belonged to one of the most important and illus-
trious families of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and her
parents advised her to live with them as much as possible
after the separation forced upon her by her husband's inex-
plicable caprice.

In 1820 the Marquise roused herself from her lethargy;
she went to Court, appeared at parties, and entertained in
her own house. From 1821 to 1827 she lived in great style,
and made herself remarked for her taste and her dress; she
had a day, an hour, for receiving visits, and ere long she had
seated herself on the throne, occupied before her by Ma-
dame la Vicomtesse de Beauseant, the Duchesse de Langeais,
and Madam ^irmiani — who on her marriage with M. de
Camps had resigned the sceptre in favor of the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse, from whom Madame d'Espard snatched it.
The world knew nothing beyond this of the private life of the
Marquise d'Espard. She seemed likely to shine for long
on the Parisian horizon, like the sun near its setting, but
which will never set.

338 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

The Marquise was on terms of great intimacy with a
duchess as famous for her beauty as for her attachment to
a prince just now in banishment, but accustomed to play a
leading part in every prospective government. Madame
d'Espard was also the friend of a foreign lady, with whom
a famous and very wily Eussian diplomate was in the habit
of discussing public affairs. And then an antiquated count-
ess, who was accustomed to shuffle the cards for the great
game of politics, had adopted her in a maternal fashion.
Thus, to any man of high ambitions, Madame d'Espard was
preparing a covert but very real influence to follow the public
and frivolous ascendency she now owed to fashion. Her
drawing-room was acquiring political individuality: "What
do they say at Madame d'Espard's ?" "Are they against the
measure in Madame d'Espard's drawing-room?" were ques-
tions repeated by a sufficient number of simpletons to give
the flock of the faithful who surrounded her the importance
of a coterie. A few damaged politicians whose wounds she
had bound up, and whom she nattered, pronounced her as
capable in diplomacy as the wife of the Russian ambassador
to London. The Marquise had indeed several times suggested
to deputies or to peers words and ideas that had rung through
Europe. She had often judged correctly of certain events
on which her circle of friends dared not express an opinion.
The principal persons about the Court came in the evening
to play whist in her rooms.

Then she also had the qualities of her defects; she was
thought to be — and she was — discreet. Her friendship
seemed to be staunch; she worked for her proteges with a
persistency which showed that she cared less for patronage
than for increased influence. This conduct was based on
her dominant passion, Vanity. Conquests and pleasure,
-which so many women love, to her seemed only means to an
end ; she aimed at living on every point of the largest circle
that life can describe.

Among the men still young, and to whom the future be-
longed, who crowded her drawing-room on great occasions,

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 339

were to be seen MM. de Marsay and de Ronquerolles, de Mont-
riveau, de la Roche-Hugon, de Serizy, Ferraud, Maxime de
Trailles, de Listomere, the two Vandenesses, du Chatelet,
and others. She would frequently receive a man whose wife
she would not admit, and her power was great enough to in-
duce certain ambitious men to submit to these hard condi-
tions, such as two famous royalist bankers, M. de Nucingen
and Ferdinand du Tillet. She had so thoroughly studied the
strength and the weakness of Paris life, that her conduct had
never given any man the smallest advantage over her. An
enormous price- might have been set on a note or letter by
which she might have compromised herself, without one
being produced.

If an arid soul enabled her to play her part to the life, her
person was no less available for it. She had a youthful figure.
Her voice was, at will, soft and fresh, or clear and hard. She
possessed in the highest degree the secret of that aristocratic
pose by which a woman wipes out the past. The Marquise
knew well the art of setting an immense space between herself
and the sort of man who fancies he may be familiar after
some chance advances. Her imposing gaze could deny every-
thing. In her conversation fine and beautiful sentiments
and noble resolutions flowed naturally, as it seemed, from a
pure heart and soul; but in reality she was all self, and
quite capable of blasting a man who was clumsy in his nego-
tiations, at the very time when she was shamelessly making
a compromise for the benefit of her own interest.

Rastignac, in trying to fasten on to this woman, had dis-
cerned her to be the cleverest of tools, but he had not yet used
it; far from handling it, he was already finding himself
crushed by it. This young Condottiere of the brain, con-
demned, like Napoleon, to give battle constantly, while know-
ing that a single defeat would prove the grave of his fortunes,
had met a dangerous adversary in his protectress. For the
first time in his turbulent life, he was playing a game with
a partner worthy of him. He saw a place as Minister in the
conquest of Madame d'Espard, so he was her tool till he
could make her his — a perilous beginning.

340 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACt

The Hotel d'Espard needed a large household, and the
Marquise had a great number of servants. The grand recep-
tions were held in the ground-floor rooms, but she lived on
the first floor of the house. The perfect order of a fine stair-
case splendidly decorated, and rooms fitted in the dignified
style which formerly prevailed at Versailles, spoke of an
immense fortune. When the judge saw the carriage gates
thrown open to admit his nephew's cab, he took in with a
rapid glance the lodge, the porter, ttie courtyard, the stables,
the arrangement of the house, the flowers that decorated
the stairs, the perfect cleanliness of the banisters, walls, and
carpets, and counted the footmen in livery who, as the bell
rang, appeared on the landing. His eyes, which only yester-
day in his parlor had sounded the dignity of misery under the
muddy clothing of the poor, now studied with the same pene-
trating vision the furniture and splendor of the rooms he
passed through, to pierce to the miser}' of grandeur.

"M. Popinot— M. Bianchon."

The two names were pronounced at the door of the boudoir
where the Marquise was sitting, a pretty room recently refur-
nished, and looking out on the garden behind the house. At
the moment Madame d'Espard was seated in one of the old
rococo armchairs of which Madame had set the fashion.
Eastignac was at her left hand on a low chair, in which he
looked settled like an Italian lady's "cousin." A third person
was standing by the corner of the chimney-piece. As the
shrewd doctor had suspected, the Marquise was a woman of
a parched and wiry constitution. But for her regimen her
complexion must have taken the ruddy tone that is produced
by constant heat; but she added to the effect of her acquired
pallor by the strong colors of the stuffs she hung her rooms
with, or in which she dressed. Reddish-brown, marone, bistre
with a golden light in it, suited her to perfection. Her
boudoir, copied from that of a famous lady then at the height
of fashion in London, was in tan-colored velvet ; but she had
added various details of ornament which moderated the
pompous splendor of this royal hue. Her hair was dressed

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 341

like a girl's in bands ending in curls, which empK&sized the
rather long oval of her face; but an oval face is as majestic
as a round one is ignoble. The mirrors, cut with facets to
lengthen or flatten the face at will, amply prove the rule as
applied to the physiognomy.

On seeing Popinot, who stood in the doorway craning his
neck like a startled animal, with his left hand in his pocket,
and the right hand holding a hat with a greasy lining, the
Marquise gave Eastignac a look wherein lay a germ of mock-
ery. The good man's rather foolish appearance was so com-
pletely in harmony with his grotesque figure and scared looks,
that Eastignac, catching sight of Bianchon's dejected ex-
pression of humiliation through his uncle, could not help
laughing, and turned away. The Marquise bowed a greet-
ing, and made a great effort to rise from her seat, falling
back again, not without grace, with an air of apologizing for
her incivility by affected weakness.

At this instant the person who was standing between the
fireplace and the door bowed slightly, and pushed forward
two chairs, which he offered by a gesture to the doctor and
the judge; then, when they had seated themselves, he leaned
against the wall again, crossing his arms.

A word as to this man. There is living now, in our day, a
painter — Decamps — who possesses in the very highest degree
the art of commanding your interest in everything he sets
before your eyes, whether it be a stone or a man. In this
respect his pencil is more skilful than his brush. He will
sketch an empty room and leave a broom against the wall.
If he chooses, you shall shudder; you shall believe that this
broom has just been the instrument of crime, and is dripping
with blood; it shall be the broom which the widow Bancal
used to clean out the room where Fualdes was murdered.
Yes, the painter will touzle that broom like a man in a rage ;
he will make each hair of it stand on-end as though it were
on your own bristling scalp; he will make it the interpreter
between the secret poem of his imagination and the poem
that shall have its birth in yours. After terrifying you l>y

342 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

the aspect of that broom, to-morrow he will draw another,
and lying by it a cat, asleep, but mysterious in its sleep, shall
tell you that this broom is that on which the wife of a German
cobbler rides off to the Sabbath on the Brocken. Or it will
be a quite harmless broom, on which he will hang the coat
of a clerk in the Treasury. Decamps had in his brush what
Paganini had in his bow — a magnetically communicative
power.

Well, I should have to transfer to my style that striking
genius, that marvelous knack of the pencil, to depict the
upright, tall, lean man dressed in black, with black hair,
who stood there without speaking a word. This gentleman
had a face like a knife-blade, cold and harsh, with a color
like Seine water when it is muddy and strewn with fragments
of charcoal from a sunken barge. He looked at the floor,
listening and passing judgment. His attitude was terrifying.
He stood there like the dreadful broom to which Decamps
has given the power of revealing a crime. Now and then,
in the course of conversation, the Marquise tried to get some
tacit advice; but however eager her questioning, he was as
grave and as rigid as the statue of the Commendatore.

The worthy Popinot, sitting on the edge of his chair in
front of the fire, his hat between his knees, stared at the gilt
chandeliers, the clock, and the curiosities with which the
chimney-shelf was covered, the velvet and trimmings of the
curtains, and all the costly and elegant nothings that a wo-
man of fashion collects about her. He was roused from his
homely meditations by Madame d'Espard, who addressed him
in a piping tone :

"Monsieur, I owe you a million thanks "

"A million thanks," thought he to himself, "that is too
many; it does not mean one/'

"For the trouble you condescend -w

"Condescend !" thought he ; "she is laughing at me."
"To take in coming to see an unhappy client, who is too ill

to go out "

Here the lawyer cut the Marquise short by giving her an

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 343

inquisitorial look, examining the sanitary condition of the
unhappy client.

"As sound as a bell/' said he to himself.

"Madame," said he, assuming a respectful mien, "you owe
me nothing. Although my visit to you is not in strict ac-
cordance with the practice of the Court, we ought to spare
no pains to discover the truth in cases of this kind. Our
judgment is then guided less by the letter of the law than
by the promptings of our conscience. Whether I seek the
truth here or in my own consulting-room, so long as I find it,
all will be well."

While Popinot was speaking, Rastignac was shaking hands
with Bianchon; the Marquise welcomed the doctor with a
little bow full of gracious significance:

"Who is that ?" asked Bianchon in a whisper of Rastignac,
indicating the dark man.

"The Chevalier d'Espard, the Marquis' brother."

"Your nephew told me," said the Marquise to Popinot,
"how much you are occupied, and I know too that you are
so good as to wish to conceal your kind actions, so as to
release those whom you oblige from the burden of gratitude.
The work in Court is most fatiguing, it would seem. Why
have they not twice as many judges ?"

"Ah, madame, that would not be difficult; we should be
none the worse if they had. But when that happens, fowls
will cut their teeth !"

As he heard this speech, so entirely in character with the
lawyer's appearance, the Chevalier measured him from head
to foot, out of one eye, as much as to say, "We shall easily
manage him."

The Marquise looked at Rastignac, who bent over her.
"That is the sort of man," murmured the dandy in her ear,
"who is trusted to pass judgments on the life and interests
of private individuals."

Like most men who have grown old in a business, Popinot
readily let himself follow the habits he had acquired, more
particularly habits of mind. His conversation was all of

344 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

athe shop." He was fond of questioning those he talked to,
forcing them to unexpected conclusions, making them teli
more than they wished to reveal. Pozzo di Borgo, it is said,
used to amuse himself by discovering other folks' secrets, and
entangling them in his diplomatic snares, and thus, by in-
vincible habit, showed how his mind was soaked in wiliness.
As soon as Popinot had surveyed the ground, so to speak,
on which he stood, he saw that it would be necessary to have
recourse to the cleverest subtleties, the most elaborately
wrapped up and disguised, which were in use in the Courts,
to detect the truth.

Bianchon sat cold and stern, as a man who has made up
his mind to endure torture without revealing his sufferings;
but in his heart he wished that his uncle could only trample
on this woman as we trample on a viper — a comparison sug-
gested to him by the Marquise's long dress, by the curve of
her attitude, her long neck, small head, and undulating
movements.

"Well, monsieur," said Madame d'Espard, "however great
my dislike to be or seem selfish, I have been suffering too long
not to wish that you may settle matters at once. Shall I
soon get a favorable decision?"

"Madame, I will do my best to bring matters to a conclu-
sion," said Popinot, with an air of frank good-nature. "Are
you ignorant of the reason which made the separation neces-
sary which now subsists between you and the Marquis d'Es-
pard?"

"Yes, monsieur," she replied, evidently prepared with a
story to tell. "At the beginning of 1816 M. d'Espard, whose
temper had completely changed within three months or so,
proposed that we should go to live on one of his estates near
Briangon, without any regard for my health, which that cli-
mate would have destroyed, or for my habits of life; I refused
to go. My refusal gave rise to such unjustifiable reproaches
on his part, that from that hour I had my suspicions as to
the soundness of his mind. On the following day he left me,
leaving me his house and the free use of my own income, and

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 345

lie went to live in the Eue de la Montague- Sainte-Genevieve,
taking with him my two children "

"One moment, madame," said the lawyer, interrupting
her, "What was that income ?"

"Twenty-six thousand francs a year/' she replied paren-
thetically. "I at once consulted old M. Bordin as to what I
ought to do," she went on; "but it seems that there are so
many difficulties in the way of depriving a father of the care
of his children, that I was forced to resign myself to remain-
ing alone at the age of twenty-two — an age at which many
young women do very foolish things. You have read my
petition, no doubt, monsieur; you know the principal facts
on which I rely to procure a Commission in Lunacy with re-
gard to M. d'Espard?"

"Have you ever applied to him, madame, to obtain the care
of your children ?"

"Yes, monsieur; but in vain. It is very hard on a mother
to be deprived of the affection of her children, particularly
when they can give her such happiness as every woman
clings to."

"The elder must be sixteen," said Popinot.

"Fifteen," said the Marquise eagerly.

Here Bianchon and Kastignac looked at each other. Ma-
dame d'Espard bit her lips.

"What can the age of my children matter to you ?"

"Well, madame," said the lawyer, without seeming to at-
tach any importance to his words, "a lad of fifteen and his
brother, of thirteen, I suppose, have legs and their wits about
them; they might come to see you on the sly. If they do
not, it is because they obey their father, and to obey him in
that matter they must love him very dearly."

"I do not understand," said the Marquise.

"You do not know, perhaps," replied Popinot, "that in your
petition your attorney represents your children as being very-
unhappy with their father ?"

Madame d'Espard replied with charming innocence :

"I do not know what my attorney may have put into my
mouth."

346 THE COMMISSION hn LUNACY

"Forgive my inferences/' said Popinot, "but Justice weighs
everything. What I ask you, madame, is suggested by my
wish thoroughly to understand the matter. By your account
M. d'Espard deserted you on the most frivolous pretext.
Instead of going to Briangon, where he wished to take you,
he remained in Paris. This point is not clear. Did he know
this Madame Jeanrenaud before his marriage ?"

"No, monsieur," replied the Marquise, with some asperity,
visible only to Kastignac and the Chevalier d'Espard.

She was offended at being cross-questioned by this lawyer
when she had intended to beguile his judgment; but as
Popinot still looked stupid from sheer absence of mind, she
ended by attributing his interrogatory to the Questioning
Spirit of Voltaire's bailiff.

"My parents," she went on, "married me at the age of six-
teen to M. d'Espard, whose name, fortune, and mode of life
were such as my family looked for in the man who was to
be my husband. M. d'Espard was then six-and-twenty ; he
was a gentleman in the English sense of the word ; his man-
ners pleased me, he seemed to have plenty of ambition, and
I like ambitious people," she added, looking at Eastignac.
"If M. d'Espard had never met that Madame Jeanrenaud,
his character, his learning, his acquirements would have
raised him — as his friends then believed — to high office in
the Government. King Charles X., at that time Monsieur,
had the greatest esteem for him, and a peer's seat, an appoint-
ment at Court, some important post certainly would have
been his. That woman turned his head, and has ruined all
the prospects of my family."

"What were M. d'Espard's religious opinions at that time ?"

"He was, and is still, a very pious man."

"You do not suppose that Madame Jeanrenaud may have
influenced him by mysticism?"

"No, monsieur."

"You have a very fine house, madame," said Popinot sud-
denly, taking his hands out of his pockets, and rising to pick
up his coat-tails and warm himself. "This boudoir is very

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 347

nice, those chairs are magnificent, the whole apartment is
sumptuous. You must indeed be most unhappy when, seeing
yourself here, you know that your children are ill lodged,
ill clothed, and ill fed. I can imagine nothing more terrible
for a mother."

"Yes, indeed. I should be so glad to give the poor little
fellows some amusement, while their father keeps them at
work from morning till night at that wretched history of
China."

"You give handsome balls; they would enjoy them, but
they might acquire a taste for dissipation. However, their
father might send them to you once or twice in the course
of the winter."

"He brings them here on my birthday and on New Year's
Day. On those days M. d'Espard does me the favor of dining
here with them."

"It is very singular behavior," said the judge, with an air
of conviction. "Have you ever seen this Dame Jeanrenaud ?"

"My brother-in-law one day, out of interest in his
brother "

"Ah! monsieur is M. d'Espard's brother?" said the lawyer,
interrupting her.

The Chevalier bowed, but did not speak.

"M. d'Espard, who has watched this affair, took me to the
Oratoire, where this woman goes to sermon, for she is a
Protestant. I saw her; she is not in the least attractive; she
looks like a butcher's wife, extremely fat, horribly marked
with the smallpox ; she has feet and hands like a man's, she
squints, in short, she is monstrous !"

"It is inconceivable," said the judge, looking like the most
imbecile judge in the whole kingdom. "And this creature
lives near here, Rue Verte, in a fine house? There are no
plain folks left, it would seem?"

"In a mansion on which her son has spent absurd sums."

"Madame," said Popinot, "I live in the Faubourg Saint-
Marceau; I know nothing of such expenses. What do you
call absurd sums ?"

348 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

"Well/' said the Marquise, "a stable with five horses and
three carriages, a phaeton, a brougham, and a cabriolet."

"That costs a large sum, then Z" asked Popinot in surprise.

"Enormous sums!" said Eastignac, intervening. "Such
an establishment would cost, for the stables, the keeping the
carriages in order, and the liveries for the men, between fif-
teen and sixteen thousand francs a year."

"Should you think so, madame?" said the judge, looking
much astonished.

"Yes, at least," replied the Marquise.

"And the furniture, too, must have cost a lot of money?"

"More than a hundred thousand francs," replied Madame
d'Espard, who could not help smiling at the lawyer's vul-
garity.

"Judges, madame, are apt to be incredulous; it is what
they are paid for, and I am incredulous. The Baron Jean-
renaud and his mother must have fleeced M. d'Espard most
preposterously, if what you say is correct. There is a stable
establishment which, by your account, costs sixteen thousand
francs a year. Housekeeping, servants' wages, and the gross
expenses of the house itself must run to twice as much; that
makes a total of from fifty to sixty thousand francs a year.
Do you suppose that these people, formerly so extremely poor,
can have so large a fortune? A million yields scarcely forty
thousand a year."

"Monsieur, the mother and son invested the money given
them by M. d'Espard in the funds when they were at 60 to 80.
I should think their income must be more than sixty thousand
francs. And then the son has fine appointments."

"If they spend sixty thousand francs a year," said the
judge, "how much do you spend ?"

"Well," said Madame d'Espard, "about the same." The
Chevalier started a little, the Marquise colored; Bianchon
looked at Eastignac; but Popinot preserved an expression of
simplicity which quite deceived Madame d'Espard. The
Chevalier took no part in the conversation; he saw that all
was lost.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 349

"These people, madame, might be indicted before the
superior Court," said Popinot.

"That was my opinion," exclaimed the Marquise, en-
chanted. "If threatened with the police, they would have
come to terms."

"Madame," said Popinot, "when M. d'Espard left you, did
he not give you a power of attorney enabling you to manage
and control your own affairs?"

"I do not understand the object of all these questions,"
said the Marquise with petulance. "It seems to me that if
you would only consider the state in which I am placed by
my husband's insanity, you ought to be troubling yourself
about him, and not about me."

"We are coming to that, madame," said the judge. "Be-
fore placing in your hands, or in any others, the control of
M. d'Espard's property, supposing he were pronounced in-
capable, the Court must inquire as to how you have managed
your own. If M. d'Espard gave you power, he would have
shown confidence in you, and the Court would recognize the
fact. Had you any power from him? You might have
bought or sold house property or invested money in busi-
ness ?"

"No, monsieur, the Blamont-Chauvrys are not in the habit
of trading," said she, extremely nettled in her pride as an
aristocrat, and forgetting the business in hand. "My prop-
erty is intact, and M. d'Espard gave me no power to act."

The Chevalier put his hand over his eyes not to betray the
vexation he felt at his sister-in-law's short-sightedness, for she
was ruining herself b}' her answers. Popinot had gone
straight to the mark in spite of his apparent doublings.

"Madame," said the lawyer, indicating the Chevalier, "this
gentleman, of course, is your near connection? May we
speak openly before these other gentlemen?"

"Speak on," said the Marquise, surprised at this caution.

"Well, madame, granting that you spend only sixty thou-
sand francs a year, to any one who sees your stables, your
house, your train of servants, and a style of housekeeping

350 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

which strikes me as far more luxurious than that of the
Jeanrenauds, that sum would seem well laid out."

The Marquise bowed an agreement.

"But/' continued the judge, "if you have no more than
twenty-six thousand francs a year, you may have a hundred
thousand francs of debt. The Court would therefore have a
right to imagine that the motives which prompt you to ask that
your husband may be deprived of the control of his property
are complicated by self-interest and the need of paying your
debts — if — you — have — any. The requests addressed to me
have interested me in your position ; consider fully and make
your confession. If my suppositions have hit the truth, there
is yet time to avoid the blame which the Court would have
a perfect right to express in the saving clauses of the verdict
if you could not show your attitude to be absolutely honor-
able and clear.

"It is our duty to examine the motives of the applicant
as well as to listen to the plea of the witness under examina-
tion, to ascertain whether the petitioner may not have been
prompted by passion, by a desire for money, which is unfor-
tunately too common "

The Marquise was on Saint Laurence's gridiron.

"And I must have explanations on this point. Madame,
I have no wish to call you to account; I only want to know
how you have managed to live at the rate of sixty thousand
francs a year, and that for some years past. There are
plenty of women who achieve this in their housekeeping, but
you are not one of those. Tell me, you may have the most
legitimate resources, a royal pension, or some claim on the
indemnities lately granted ; but even then you must have had
your husband's authority to receive them."

The Marquise did not speak.

"You must remember," Popinot went on, "that M.
d'Espard may wish to enter a protest, and his counsel will
have a right to find out whether you have any creditors. This
boudoir is newly furnished, your rooms are not now fur-
nished with the things left to you by M. d'Espard in 1816.

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 351

If, as you did me the honor of informing me, furniture is
costly for the Jeanrenauds, it must be yet more so for you,
who are a great lady. Though I am a judge, I am but a man ;
I may be wrong — tell me so. Eemember the duties imposed
on me by the law, and the rigorous inquiries it demands,
when the case before it is the suspension from all his func-
tions of the father of a family in the prime of life. So you
will pardon me, Madame la Marquise, for laying all these
difficulties before you ; it will be easy for you to give me an
explanation.

"When a man is pronounced incapable of the control of his
own affairs, a trustee has to be appointed. Who will be the
trustee ?"

"His brother," said the Marquise.

The Chevalier bowed. There was a short silence, very un-
comfortable for the five persons who were present. The
judge, in sport as it were, had laid open the woman's sore
place. Popinot's countenance of common, clumsy good-
nature, at which the Marquise, the Chevalier, and Eastignac
had been inclined to laugh, had gained importance in their
eyes. As they stole a look at him, they discerned the various
expressions of that eloquent mouth. The ridiculous mortal
was a judge of acumen. His studious notice of the boudoir
was accounted for: he had started from the gilt elephant
supporting the chimney-clock, examining all this luxury, and
had ended by reading this woman's soul.

"If the Marquis d'Espard is mad about China, I see that
you are not less fond of its products," said Popinot, looking
at the porcelain on the chimney-piece. "But perhaps it was
from M. le Marquis that you had these charming Oriental
pieces," and he pointed to some precious trifles.

This irony, in very good taste, made Bianchon smile, and
petrified Rastignac, while the Marquise bit her thin lips.

"Instead of being the protector of a woman placed in a
cruel dilemma — an alternative between losing her fortune
and her children, and being regarded as her husband's en-
emy," she said, "you accuse me, monsieur ! You suspect my

motives ! You must own that your conduct is strange !"

vol. 7—45

352 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

"Madame," said the judge eagerly, "the caution exercised
by the Court in such cases as these might have given you,
in any other judge, a perhaps less indulgent critic than I
am. — And do you suppose that M. d'Espard's lawyer will
show you any great consideration ? Will he not be suspicious
of motives which may be perfectly pure and disinterested?
Your life will be at his mercy ; he will inquire into it without
qualifying his search by the respectful deference I have for
you."

"I am much obliged to you, monsieur," said the Marquise
satirically. "Admitting for the moment that I owe thirty
thousand, or fifty thousand francs, in the first place, it would
be a mere trifle to the d'Espards and the Blamont-Chauvrys.
But if my husband is not in the possession of his mental fac-
ulties, would that prevent his being pronounced incapable?"

"No, madame," said Popinot.

"Although you have questioned me with a sort of cunning
which I should not have suspected in a judge, and under
circumstances where straightforwardness would have an-
swered your purpose," she went on, "I will tell you without
subterfuge that my position in the world, and the efforts I
have to make to keep up my connection, are not in the least
to my taste. I began my life by a long period of solitude;
but my children's interest appealed to me; I felt that
I must fill their father's place. By receiving my friends,
by keeping up all this connection, by contracting these debts,
I have secured their future welfare; I have prepared for
them a brilliant career where they will find help and favor ;
and to have what has thus been acquired, many a man of
business, lawyer or banker, would gladly pay all it has cost
me."

"I appreciate your devoted conduct, madame," replied
"Popinot. "It does you honor, and I blame you for nothing.
A judge belongs to all : he must know and weigh every fact."

Madame d'Espard's tact and practice in estimating men
made her understand that M. Popinot was not to be influ-
enced by any consideration. She had counted on an ambi-

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 353

tious lawyer, she had found a man of conscience. She at
once thought of finding other means for securing the success
of her side.

The servants brought in tea.

"Have you any further explanations to give me, madame ?"
said Popinot, seeing these preparations.

"Monsieur," she replied haughtily, "do your business your
own way; question M. d'Espard, and you will pity me, I am
sure." She raised her head, looking Popinot in the face with
pride, mingled with impertinence; the worthy man bowed
himself out respectfully.

"A nice man is your uncle," said Kastignac to Bianchon.
"Is he really so dense ? Does not he know what the Marquise
d'Espard is, what her influence means, her unavowed power
over people? The Keeper of the Seals will be with her to-

"My dear fellow, how can I help it?" said Bianchon. "Did
not I warn you ? He is not a man you can get over."

"No," said Kastignac; "he is a man you must run over."

The doctor was obliged to make his bow to the Marquise
and her mute Chevalier to catch up Popinot, who, not being
the man to endure an embarrassing position, was pacing
through the rooms.

"That woman owes a hundred thousand crowns," said the
judge, as he stepped into his nephew's cab.

"And what do you think of the case ?"

"I," said the judge. "I never have an opinion till I have
gone into everything. To-morrow early I will send to Ma-
dame Jeanrenaud to call on me in my private office at four
o'clock, to make her explain the facts which concern her,
for she is compromised."

"I should very much like to know what the end will be."

"Why, bless me, do not you see that the Marquise is the
tool of that tall lean man who never uttered a word ? There is
a strain of Cain in him, but of the Cain who goes to the
Law Courts for his bludgeon, and there, unluckily for him,
we keep more than one Damocles' sword."

354 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

"Oh, Rastignac! what brought you into that boat, I won-
der ?" exclaimed Bianchon.

"Ah, we are used to seeing these little family conspiracies/'
said Popinot. "Not a year passes without a number of ver-
dicts of 'insufficient evidence' against applications of this
kind. In our state of society such an attempt brings no dis-
honor, while we send a poor devil to the galleys who breaks
a pane of glass dividing him from a bowl full of gold. Our
Code is not faultless."

"But these are the facts ?"

"My boy, do you not know all the judicial romances with
which clients impose on their attorneys? If the attorneys
condemned themselves to state nothing but the truth, they
would not earn enough to keep their office open."

Next day, at four in the afternoon, a very stout dame,
looking a good deal like a cask dressed up in a gown and
belt, mounted Judge Popinot's stairs, perspiring and panting.
She had, with great difficulty, got out of a green landau,
which suited her to a miracle; you could not think of the
woman without the landau, or the landau without the woman.

"It is I, my dear sir," said she, appearing in the doorway
of the judge's room. "Madame Jeanrenaud, whom you sum-
moned exactly as if I were a thief, neither more nor less."

The common words were spoken in a common voice,
broken by the wheezing of asthma, and ending in a cough.

"When I go through a damp place, I can't tell you what I
suffer, sir. I shall never make old bones, saving your presence.
However, here I am."

The lawyer was quite amazed at the appearance of this
supposed Marechale d'Ancre. Madame Jeanrenaud's face
was pitted with an infinite number of little holes, was very
red, with a pug nose and a low forehead, and was as round as
a ball; for everything about the good woman was round.
She had the bright eyes of a country woman, an honest gaze,
a cheerful tone, and chestnut hair held in place by a bonnet
cap under a green bonnet decked with a shabby bunch of

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 355

auriculas. Her stupendous bust was a thing to laugh at,
for it made one fear some grotesque explosion every time she
coughed. Her enormous legs were of the shape which make
the Paris street boy describe such a woman as being built on
piles. The widow wore a green gown trimmed with chin-
chilla, which looked on her as a splash of dirty oil would look
on a bride's veil. In short, everything about her harmonized
with her last words : "Here I am."

"Madame," said Popinot, "you are suspected of having
used some seductive arts to induce M. d'Espard to hand over
to you very considerable sums of money."

"Of what ! of what !" cried she. "Of seductive arts ? But,
my dear sir, you are a man to be respected, and, moreover,
as a lawyer you ought to have some good sense. Look at me !
Tell me if I am likely to seduce any one. I cannot tie my
own shoes, nor even stoop. For these twenty years past, the
Lord be praised, I have not dared to put on a pair of stays
under pain of sudden death. I was as thin as an asparagus
stalk when I was seventeen, and pretty too — I may say so
now. So I married Jeanrenaud, a good fellow, and head-
man on the salt-barges. I had my boy, who is a fine young
man; he is my pride, and it is not holding myself cheap to
say he is my best piece of work. My little Jeanrenaud was
a soldier who did Napoleon credit, and who served in the
Imperial Guard. But, alas! at the death of my old man,
who was drowned, times changed for the worse. I had the
smallpox. I was kept two years in my room without stirring,
and I came out of it the size you see me, hideous for ever,
and as wretched as could be. These are my seductive arts."

"But what, then, can the reasons be that have induced M.
d'Espard to give you sums ?"

"Hugious sums, monsieur, say the word; I do not mind.
But as to his reasons, I am not at liberty to explain them."

"You are wrong. At this moment, his family, very natu-
rally alarmed, are about to bring an action "

"Heavens above us !" said the good woman, starting up.
"Is it possible that he should be worried on my account?

356 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

That king of men, a man that has not his match! Kather
than he should have the smallest trouble, or a hair less on
his head I could almost say, we would return every sou,
monsieur. Write that down on your papers. Heaven above
us ! I will go at once and tell Jeanrenaud what is going on !
A pretty thing indeed !"

And the little old woman went out, rolled herself down-
stairs, and disappeared.

"That one tells no lies," said Popinot to himself. "Well,
to-morrow I shall know the whole story, for I shall go to
see the Marquis d'Espard."

People who have outlived the age when a man wastes his
vitality at random, know how great an influence may be ex-
ercised on more important events by apparently trivial inci-
dents, and will not be surprised at the weight here given to
the following minor fact. Next day Popinot had an attack
of coryza, a complaint which is not dangerous, and generally
known by the absurd and inadequate name of a cold in the
head.

The judge, who could not suppose that the delay could
be serious, feeling himself a little feverish, kept his room,
and did not go to see the Marquis d'Espard. This day lost
was, to this affair, what on the Day of Dupes the cup of soup
had been, taken by Marie de Medici, which, by delaying her
meeting with Louis XIII., enabled Eichelieu to arrive at
Saint-Germain before her, and recapture his royal slave.

Before accompanying the lawyer and his registering clerk
to the Marquis d'Espard's house, it may be as well to glance
at the home and the private affairs of this father of sons whom
his wife's petition represented to be a madman.

Here and there in the old parts of Paris a few buildings
may still be seen in which the archaeologist can discern an
intention of decorating the city, and that love of property
which leads the owner to give a durable character to the struct-
ure. The house in which M. d'Espard was then living, in
the Eue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve, was one of these
old mansions, built in stone, and not devoid of a certain rich-

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 357

ness of style; but time had blackened the stone, and revolu-
tions in the town had damaged it both outside and inside.
The dignitaries who formerly dwelt in the neighborhood of
the University having disappeared with the great ecclesi-
astical foundations, this house had become the home of in-
dustries and of inhabitants whom it was never destined to
shelter. During the last century a printing establishment
had worn down the polished floors, soiled the carved wood,
blackened the walls, and altered the principal internal ar-
rangements. Formerly the residence of a Cardinal, this fine
house was now divided among plebeian tenants. The character
of the architecture showed that it had been built under the
reigns of Henry III., Henry IV., and Louis XIII., at the
time when the hotels Mignon and Serpente were erected in
the same neighborhood, with the palace of the Princess Pala-
tine, and the Sorbonne. An old man could remember having
heard it called, in the last century, the hotel Duperron, so
it seemed probable that the illustrious Cardinal of that name
had built, or perhaps merely lived in it.

There still exists, indeed, in the corner of the courtyard,
a perron or flight of several outer steps by which the house
is entered ; and the way into the garden on the garden front
is down a similar flight of steps. In spite of dilapidations,
the luxury lavished by the architect on the balustrade and
entrance porch crowning these two perrons suggests the
simple-minded purpose of commemorating the owner's name,
a sort of sculptured pun which our ancestors often allowed
themselves. Finally, in support of this evidence, archaeolo-
gists can still discern in the medallions which show on the
principal front some traces of the cords of the Roman hat.

M. le Marquis d'Espard lived on the ground floor, in order,
no doubt, to enjoy the garden, which might be called spacious
for that neighborhood, and which lay open to the south, two
advantages imperatively necessary for his children's health.
The situation of the house, in a street on a steep hill, as its
name indicates, secured these ground-floor rooms against
ever being damp. M. d'Espard had taken them, no doubt,

358 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

for a very moderate price, rents being low at the time when
he settled in that quarter, in order to be among the schools
and to superintend his boys' education. Moreover, the state
in which he found the place, with everything to repair, had
no doubt induced the owner to be accommodating. Thus M.
d'Espard had been able to go to some expense to settle him-
self suitably without being accused of extravagance. The
loftiness of the rooms, the paneling, of which nothing sur-
vived but the frames, the decoration of the ceilings, all dis-
played the dignity which the prelacy stamped on whatever
it attempted or created, and which artists discern to this day
in the smallest relic that remains, though it be but a book,
a dress, the panel of a bookcase, or an armchair.

The Marquis had the rooms painted in the rich brown
tones beloved of the Dutch and of the citizens of Old Paris,
hues which lend such good effects to the painter of genre.
The panels were hung with plain paper in harmony with the
paint. The window curtains were of inexpensive materials,
but chosen so as to produce a generally happy result; the
furniture was not too crowded and judiciously placed. Any
one on going into this home could not resist a sense of sweet
peacefulness, produced by the perfect calm, the stillness
which prevailed, by the unpretentious unity of color, the
keeping of the picture, in the words a painter might use.
A certain nobleness in the details, the exquisite cleanliness
of the furniture, and a perfect concord of men and things,
all brought the word "suavity" to the lips.

Few persons were admitted to the rooms used by the Mar-
quis and his two sons, whose life might perhaps seem mys-
terious to their neighbors. In a wing towards the street, on
the third floor, there are three large rooms which had been
]eft in the state of dilapidation and grotesque bareness to
which they had been reduced by the printing works. These
three rooms, devoted to the evolution of the Picturesque His-
tory of China, were contrived to serve as a writing-room, a
depository, and a private room, where M. d'Espard sat during
part of the day ; for after breakfast till four in the afternoon

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 359

the Marquis remained in this room on the third floor to work
at the publication he had undertaken. Visitors wanting to
see him commonly found him there, and often the two boys
on their return from school resorted thither. Thus the
ground-floor rooms were a sort of sanctuary where the father
and sons spent their time from the hour of dinner till the
next day, and his domestic life was carefully closed against
the public eye.

His only servants were a cook — an old woman who had
long been attached to his family — and a man-servant forty
years old, who was with him when he married Mademoiselle
de Blamont. His children's nurse had also remained with
them, and the minute care to which the apartment bore wit-
ness revealed the sense of order and the maternal affection
expended by this woman in her master's interest, in the man-
agement of his house, and the charge of his children. These
three good souls, grave and uncommunicative folk, seemed to
have entered into the idea which ruled the Marquis' domestic
life. And the contrast between their habits and those of
most servants was a peculiarity which cast an air of mystery
over the house, and fomented the calumny to which M. d'Es-
pard himself lent occasion. Very laudable motives had made
him determine never to be on visiting terms with any of the
other tenants in the house. In undertaking to educate his
boys he wished to keep them from all contact with strangers.
Perhaps, too, he wished to avoid the intrusion of neighbors.

In a man of his rank, at a time when the Quartier Latin
was distracted by Liberalism, such conduct was sure to rouse
in opposition a host of petty passions, of feelings whose folly
is only to be measured by their meanness, the outcome of
porters' gossip and malevolent tattle from door to door, all
unknown to M. d'Espard and his retainers. His man-servant
was stigmatized as a Jesuit, his cook as a sly fox; the nurse
was in collusion with Madame Jeanrenaud to rob the mad-
man. The madman was the Marquis. By degrees the other
tenants came to regard as proofs of madness a number of
things they had noticed in M. d'Espard, and passed through

860 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

the sieve of their judgment without discerning any reason-
able motive for them.

Having no belief in the success of the History of China,
they had managed to convince the landlord of the house that
M. d'Espard had no money just at a time when, with the for-
getf ulness which often befalls busy men, he had allowed the
tax-collector to send him a summons for non-payment of
arrears. The landlord had forthwith claimed his quarter's
rent from January 1st by sending in a receipt, which the
porter's wife had amused herself by detaining. On the 15th
a summons to pay was served on M. d'Espard, the portress
had delivered it at her leisure, and he supposed it to be some
misunderstanding, not conceiving of any incivility from a
man in whose house he had been living for twelve years. The
Marquis was actually seized by a bailiff at the time when his
man-servant had gone to carry the money for the rent to the
landlord.

This arrest, assiduously reported to the persons with whom
he was in treaty for his undertaking, had alarmed some of
them who were already doubtful of M. d'Espard's solvency
in consequence of the enormous sums which Baron Jeanre-
naud and his mother were said to be receiving from him.
And, indeed, these suspicions on the part of the tenants, the
creditors, and the landlord had some excuse in the Marquis'
extreme economy in housekeeping. He conducted it as a
ruined man might. His servants always paid in ready money
for the most trifling necessaries of life, and acted as not choos-
ing to take credit; if now they had asked for anything on
credit, it would probably have been refused, calumnious gossip
had been so widely believed in the neighborhood. There are
tradesmen who like those of their customers who pay badly
when they see them often, while they hate others, and very
good ones, who hold themselves on too high a level to allow
of any familiarity as chums, a vulgar but expressive word.
Men are made so; in almost every class they will allow to a
gossip, or a vulgar soul that flatters them, facilities and favors
they refuse to the superiority they resent, in whatever form

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 361

it may show itself. The shopkeeper who rails at the Court
has his courtiers.

In short, the manners of the Marquis and his children
were certain to arouse ill-feeling in their neighbors, and to
work them up by degrees to the pitch of malevolence when
men do not hesitate at an act of meanness if only it may dam-
age the adversary they have themselves created.

M. d'Espard was a gentleman, as his wife was a lady, by
birth and breeding; noble types, already so rare in France
that the observer can easily count the persons who per-
fectly realize them. These two characters are based on prim-
itive ideas, on beliefs that may be called innate, on habits
formed in infancy,, and which have ceased to exist. To be-
lieve in pure blood, in a privileged race, to stand in thought
above other men, must we not from birth have measured the
distance which divides patricians from the mob? To com-
mand, must we not have never met our equal ? And finally,
must not education inculcate the ideas with which Nature
inspires those great men on whose brow she has placed a
crown before their mother has ever set a kiss there? These
ideas, this education, are no longer possible in France, where
for forty years past chance has arrogated the right of making
noblemen by dipping them in the blood of battles, by gilding
them with glory, by crowning them with the halo of genius;
where the abolition of entail and of eldest sonship, by fritter-
ing away estates, compels the nobleman to attend to his own
business instead of attending to affairs of state, and where
personal greatness can only be such greatness as is acquired
by long and patient toil : quite a new era.

Regarded as a relic of that great institution known as
feudalism, M. d'Espard deserved respectful admiration. If
he believed himself to be by blood the superior of other men,
he also believed in all the obligations of nobility; he had
the virtues and the strength it demands. He had brought up
his children in his own principles, and taught them from
the cradle the religion of their caste. A deep sense of their
own dignity, pride of name, the conviction that they were

3G2 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

by birth great, gave rise in them to a kingly pride, the courage
of knights, and the protecting kindness of a baronial lord;
their manners, harmonizing with their notions, would have
become princes, and offended all the world of the Rue de la
Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve — a world, above all others, of
equality, where every one believed that M. d'Espard was
ruined, and where all, from the lowest to the highest, refused
the privileges of nobility to a nobleman without money, be-
cause they all were ready to allow an enriched bourgeois to
usurp them. Thus the lack of communion between this
family and other persons was as much moral as it was
physical.

In the father and the children alike, their personality har-
monized with the spirit within. M. d'Espard, at this time
about fifty, might have sat as a model to represent the aris-
tocracy of birth in the nineteenth century. He was slight
and fair; there was in the outline and general expression
of his face a native distinction which spoke of lofty senti-
ments, but it bore the impress of a deliberate coldness which
commanded respect a little too decidedly. His aquiline nose
bent at the tip from left to right, a slight crookedness which
was not devoid of grace; his blue eyes, his high forehead,
prominent enough at the brows to form a thick ridge that
checked the light and shaded his eyes, all indicated a spirit
of rectitude, capable of perseverance and perfect loyalty,
while it gave a singular look to his countenance. This pent-
house forehead might, in fact, hint at a touch of madness,
and his thick-knitted eyebrows added to the apparent eccen-
tricity. He had the white well-kept hands of a gentleman;
his foot was high and narrow. His hesitating speech — not
merely as to his pronunciation, which was that of a stam-
merer, but also in the expression of his ideas, his thought,
and language — produced on the mind of the hearer the im-
pression of a man who, in familiar phraseology, comes and
goes, feels his way, tries everything, breaks off his gestures,
and finishes nothing. This defect was purely superficial, and
in contrast with the decisiveness of a firmly-set mouth, and

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY SG3

the strongly-marked character of his physiognomy. His
rather jerky gait matched his mode of speech. These pe-
culiarities helped to affirm his supposed insanity. In spite
of his elegant appearance, he was systematically parsimonious
in his personal expenses, and wore the same black frock-coat
for three or four years, brushed with extreme care by his old
man-servant.

As to the children, they both were handsome, and en-
dowed with a grace which did not exclude an expression of
aristocratic disdain. They had the bright coloring, the clear
eye, the transparent flesh which reveal habits of purity, regu-
larity of life, and a due proportion of work and play. They
both had black hair and blue eyes, and a twist in their nose,
like their father; but their mother, perhaps, had transmitted
to them the dignity of speech, of look and mien, which are
hereditary in the Blamont-Chauvrys. Their voices, as clear
as crystal, had an emotional quality, the softness which proves
so seductive; they had, in short, the voice a woman would
willingly listen to after feeling the flame of their looks. But,
above all, they had the modesty of pride, a chaste reserve, a
touch-me-not which at a maturer age might have seemed
intentional coyness, so much did their demeanor inspire a
wish to know them. The elder, Comte Clement de Negre-
pelisse, was close upon his sixteenth year. For the last two
years he had ceased to wear the pretty English round jacket
which his brother, Vicomte Camille d'Espard, still wore.
The Count, who for the last six months went no more to
the College Henri IV., was dressed in the style of a young
man enjoying the first pleasures of fashion. His father
had not wished to condemn him to a year's useless study of
philosophy; he was trying to give his knowledge some con-
sistency by the study of transcendental mathematics. At
the same time, the Marquis was having him taught Eastern
languages, the international law of Europe, heraldry, and
history from the original sources — charters, early documents,
and collections of edicts. Camille had lately begun to study
rhetoric.

364 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

The da}7 when Popinot arranged to go to question M.
d'Espard was a Thursda}r, a holiday. At about nine in
the morning, before their father was awake, the brothers
were playing in the garden. Clement was finding it hard to
refuse his brother, who was anxious to go to the shooting-
gallery for the first time, and who begged him to second his
request to the Marquis. The Viscount always rather took ad-
vantage of his weakness, and was very fond of wrestling with
his brother. So the couple were quarreling and fighting in
play like schoolboys. As they ran in the garden, chasing each
other, they made so much noise as to wake their father, who
came to the window without their perceiving him in the heat
of the fray. The Marquis amused himself with watching
his two children twisted together like snakes, their faces
flushed by the exertion of their strength; their complexion
was rose and white, their eyes flashed sparks, their limbs
writhed like cords in the fire ; they fell, sprang up again, and
caught each other like athletes in a circus, affording their
father one of those moments of happiness which would make
amends for the keenest anxieties of a busy life. Two other
persons, one on" the second and one on the first floor, were
also looking into the garden, and saying that the old mad-
man was amusing himself by making his children fight.
Immediately a number of heads appeared at the windows;
the Marquis, noticing them, called a word to his sons, who at
once climbed up to the window and jumped into his room,
and Clement obtained the permission asked by Camille.

All through the house every one was talking of the Mar-
quis' new form of insanity. When Popinot arrived at about
twelve o'clock, accompanied by his clerk, the portress, when
asked for M. d'Espard, conducted him to the third floor,
telling his "as how M. d'Espard, no longer ago than that
very morning, had set on his two children to fight, and
laughed like the monster he was on seeing the younger biting
the elder till he bled, and as how no doubt he longed to see
them kill each other. — Don't ask me the reason why," she
added; "he doesn't know himself!"

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 36H

Just as the woman spoke these decisive words, she had
brought the judge to the landing on the third floor, face to
face with a door covered with notices announcing the suc-
cessive numbers of the Picturesque History of China. The
muddy floor, the dirty banisters, the door where the printers
had left their marks, the dilapidated window, and the ceiling
on which the apprentices had amused themselves with draw-
ing monstrosities with the smoky flare of their tallow dips,
the piles of paper and litter heaped up in the corners, in-
tentionally or from sheer neglect — in short, every detail of
the picture lying before his eyes, agreed so well with the
facts alleged by the Marquise that the judge, in spite of his
impartiality, could not help believing them.

"There you are, gentlemen," said the porter's wife ; "there
is the manifactor, where the Chinese swallow up enough to
feed the whole neighborhood."

The clerk looked at the judge with a smile, and Popinot
found it hard to keep his countenance. They went together
into the outer room, where sat an old man, who, no doubt,
performed the functions of office clerk, shopman, and
cashier. This old man was the Maitre Jacques of China.
Along the walls ran long shelves, on which the published
numbers lay in piles. A partition in wood, with a grating
lined with green curtains, cut off the end of the room, form-
ing a private office. A till with a slit to admit or disgorge
crown pieces indicated the cash-desk.

"M. d'Espard?" said Popinot, addressing the man, who
wore a gray blouse.

The shopman opened the door into the next room, where
the lawyer and his companion saw a venerable old man,
white-headed and simply dressed, wearing the Cross of Saint-
Louis, seated at a desk. He ceased comparing some sheets
of colored prints to look up at the two visitors. This room
was an unpretentious office, full of books and proof-sheets.
There was a black wood table at which some one, at the mo-
ment absent, no doubt was accustomed to work,

"The Marquis d'Espard?" said Popinot.

366 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

"No, monsieur," said the old man, rising; "what do you
want with him?" he added, coming forward, and showing
"by his demeanor the dignified manners and habits due to a
gentlemanly education.

"We wish to speak to him on business exclusively personal
to himself," replied Popinot.

"D'Espard, here are some gentlemen who want to see you,"
then said the old man, going into the furthest room, where
the Marquis was sitting by the fire reading the newspaper.

This innermost room had a shabby carpet, the windows
were hung with gray holland curtains ; the furniture consisted
of a few mahogany chairs, two armchairs, a desk with a re-
volving front, an ordinary office table, and on the chimney-
shelf, a dingy clock and two old candlesticks. The old man
led the way for Popinot and his registrar, and pulled forward
two chairs, as though he were master of the place; M.
d'Espard left it to him. After the preliminary civilities,
during which the judge watched the supposed lunatic, the
Marquis naturally asked what was the object of this visit.
On this Popinot glanced significantly at the old gentleman
and the Marquis.

"I believe, Monsieur le Marquis," said he, "that the char-
acter of my functions, and the inquiry that has brought me
here, make it desirable that we should be alone, though it is
understood by law that in such cases the inquiries have a
sort of family publicity. I am judge on the Inferior Court
of Appeal for the Department of the Seine, and charged
by the President with the duty of examining you as to certain
facts set forth in a petition for a Commission in Lunacy on
the part of the Marquise d'Espard."

The old man withdrew. When the lawyer and the Mar-
quis were alone, the clerk shut the door, and seated himself
unceremoniously at the office table, where he laid out his
papers and prepared to take down his notes. Popinot had
still kept his eye on M. d'Espard; he was watching the ef-
fect on him of this crude statement, so painful for a man
in full possession of his reason. The Marquis d'Espard,

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 367

whose face was usually pale, as are those of fair men, sud-
denly turned scarlet with anger; he trembled for an instant,
sat down, laid his paper on the chimney-piece, and looked
down. In a moment he had recovered his gentlemanly dig-
nity, and looked steadily at the judge, as if to read in his
countenance the indications of his character.

"How is it, monsieur," he asked, "that I have had no notice
of such a petition ?"

"Monsieur le Marquis, persons on whom such a commis-
sion is held, not being supposed to have the use of their rea-
son, any notice of the petition is unnecessary. The duty of
the Court chiefly consists in verifying the allegations of the
petitioner."

"Nothing can be fairer," replied the Marquis. "Well,
then, monsieur, be so good as to tell me what I ought to
do "

"You have only to answer my questions, omitting nothing.
However delicate the reasons may be which may have led
you to act in such a manner as to give Madame d'Espard
a pretext for her petition, speak without fear. It is un-
necessary to assure you that lawyers know their duties, and
that in such cases the profoundest secrecy "

"Monsieur," said the Marquis, whose face expressed the
sincerest pain, "if my explanations should lead to any blame
being attached to Madame d'Espard's conduct, what will be
the result?"

"The Court may add its censure to its reasons for its deci-
sion."

"Is such censure optional? If I were to stipulate with
you, before replying, that nothing should be said that could
annoy Madame d'Espard in the event of your report being
in my favor, would the Court take my request into considera-
tion?"

The judge looked at the Marquis, and the two men ex-
changed sentiments of equal magnanimity.

"'Noel," said Popinot to his registrar, "go into the other
room. If you can be of use, I will call you in. — If, as I am

368 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

inclined to think," he went on, speaking to the Marquis when
the clerk had gone out, "I find that there is some misunder-
standing in this case, I can promise you, monsieur, that on
your application the Court will act with due courtesy."

"There is a leading fact put forward by Madame d'Espard,
the most serious of all, of which I must beg for an explana-
tion," said the judge after a pause. "It refers to the dissipa-
tion of your fortune to the advantage of a certain Madame
Jeanrenaud, the widow of a bargemaster — or rather, to that
of her son, Colonel Jeanrenaud, for whom you are said to
have procured an appointment, to have exhausted your in-
fluence with the King, and at last to have extended such
protection as secures him a good marriage. The petition sug-
gests that such a friendship is more devoted than any feel-
ings, even those which morality must disapprove "

A sudden flush crimsoned the Marquis' face and forehead,
tears even started to his eyes, for his eyelashes were wet, then
wholesome pride crushed the emotions, which in a man are ac-
counted a weakness.

"To tell you the truth, monsieur," said the Marquis, in a
broken voice, "you place me in a strange dilemma. The mo-
tives of my conduct were to have died with me. To reveal
them I must disclose to you some secret wounds, must place
the honor of my family in your keeping, and must speak of
myself, a delicate matter, as you will fully understand. I
hope, monsieur, that it will all remain a secret between us.
You will, no doubt, be able to find in the formulas of the
law one which will allow of judgment being pronounced with-
out any betrayal of my confidences."

"So far as that goes, it is perfectly possible, Monsieur le
Marquis."

"Some time after my marriage," said M. d'Espard, "my
wife having run into considerable expenses, I was obliged to
have recourse to borrowing. You know what was the position
of noble families during the Kevolution ; I had not been able
to keep a steward or a man of business. Nowadays gentle-
men are for the most part obliged to manage their affairs

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 369

themselves. Most of my title-deeds had been brought to
Paris, from Languedoc, Provence, or le Comtat, by my father,
who dreaded, and not without reason, the inquisition which
family title-deeds, and what was then styled the 'parch-
ments' of the privileged class, brought down on the owners.

"Our name is Xegrepelisse ; d'Espard is a title acquired in
the time of Henri IV. by a marriage which brought us the
estates and titles of the house of d'Espard, on condition of
our bearing an escutcheon of pretence on our coat-of-arms,
those of the house of d'Espard, an old family of Beam, con-
nected in the female line with that of Albret : quarterly, paly
of or and sable; and azure two griffins' claws armed, gules
in saltire, with the famous motto Des partem leonis. At the
time of this alliance we lost Negrepelisse, a little town which
was as famous during the religious struggles as was my
ancestor who then bore the name. Captain de Negrepelisse
was ruined by the burning of all his property, for the
Protestants did not spare a friend of Montluc's.

"The Crown was unjust to M. de Negrepelisse ; he received
neither a marshal's baton, nor a post as governor, nor any
indemnity; King Charles IX., who was fond of him, died
without being able to reward him; Henri IV. arranged his
marriage with Mademoiselle d'Espard, and secured him the
estates of that house, but all those of the Negrepelisses had
already passed into the hands of his creditors.

"My great-grandfather, the Marquis d'Espard, was, like
me, placed early in life at the head of his family by the death
of his father, who, after dissipating his wife's fortune, left his
son nothing but the entailed estates of the d'Espards, bur-
dened with a jointure. The young Marquis was all the more
straitened for money because he held a post at Court. Being
in great favor with Louis XIV., the King's goodwill brought
him a fortune. But here, monsieur, a blot stained our
escutcheon, an unconfessed and horrible stain of blood and
disgrace which I am making it my business to wipe out. I
discovered the secret among the deeds relating to the estate
of Xegrepelisse and the packets of letters."

370 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

At this solemn moment the Marquis spoke without hesita-
tion or any of the repetition habitual with him; but it is a
matter of common observation that persons who, in ordinary
life, are afflicted with these two defects, are freed from them
as soon as any passionate emotion underlies their speech.

"The Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes was decreed/' he
went on. "You are no doubt aware, monsieur, that this was
an opportunity for many favorites to make their fortunes.
Louis XIV. bestowed on the magnates about his Court the
confiscated lands of those Protestant families who did not
take the prescribed steps for the sale of their property. Some
persons in high favor went Trotestant-hunting,' as the phrase
was. I have ascertained beyond a doubt that the fortune en-
joyed to this day by two ducal families is derived from lands
seized from hapless merchants.

"I will not attempt to explain to you, a man of law, all
the manoeuvres employed to entrap the refugees who had
large fortunes to carry away. It is enough to say that the
lands of Negrepelisse, comprising twenty-two churches and
rights over the town, and those of Gravenges which had for-
merly belonged to us, were at that time in the hands of a
Protestant family. My grandfather recovered them by gift
from Louis XIV. This gift was effected by documents hall-
marked by atrocious iniquity. The owner of these two
estates, thinking he would be able to return, had gone through
the form of a sale, and was going to Switzerland to join his
family, whom he had sent in advance. He wished, no doubt,
to take advantage of every delay granted by the law, so as to
settle the concerns of his business.

"This man was arrested by order of the governor, the
trustee confessed the truth, the poor merchant was hanged,
and my ancestor had the two estates. I would gladly have
been able to ignore the share he took in the plot; but the
governor was his uncle on the mother's side, and I have un-
fortunately read the letter in which he begged him to apply
to Deodatus, the name agreed upon by the Court to designate
the King. In this letter there is a tone of jocosity with refer-

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 371

ence to the victim, which filled me with horror. In the end,
the sums of money sent by the refugee family to ransom the
poor man's life were kept by the governor, who despatched
the merchant all the same."

The Marquis paused, as though the memory of it were
still too heavy for him to bear.

"This unfortunate family were named Jeanrenaud," he
went on. "That name is enough to account for my conduct.
I could never think without keen pain of the secret disgrace
that weighed on my family. That fortune enabled my grand-
father to marry a demoiselle de Navarreins-Lansac, heiress
to the younger branch of that house, who were at that time
much richer than the elder branch of the Navarreins. My
father thus became one of the largest landowners in the
kingdom. He was able to marry my mother, a Grandlieu of
the younger branch. Though ill-gotten, this property has
been singularly profitable.

"For my part, being determined to remedy the mischief,
I wrote to Switzerland, and knew no peace till I was on the
traces of the Protestant victim's heirs. At last I discovered
that the Jeanrenauds, reduced to abject want, had left Fri-
bourg and returned to live in France. Finally, I found in
M. Jeanrenaud, lieutenant in a cavalry regiment under Na-
poleon, the sole heir of this unhappy family. In my eyes,
monsieur, the rights of the Jeanrenauds were clear. To es-
tablish a prescriptive right is it not necessary that there
should have been some possibility of proceeding against those
who are in the enjoyment of it? To whom could these
refugees have appealed ? Their Court of Justice was on high,
or rather, monsieur, it was here," and the Marquis struck
his hand on his heart. "I did not choose that my children
should be able to think of me as I have thought of my father
and of my ancestors. I aim at leaving them an unblemished
inheritance and escutcheon. I did not choose that nobility
should be a lie in my person. And, after all, politically speak-
ing, ought those emigres who are now appealing against revo-
lutionary confiscations, to keep the property derived from an-
tecedent confiscations by positive crimes?

372 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

"I found in M. Jeanrenaud and his mother the most per-
verse honesty; to hear them you would suppose that they
were robbing me. In spite of all I could say, they will ac-
cept no more than the value of the lands at the time when
the King bestowed them on my family. The price was
settled between us at the sum of eleven hundred thousand
francs, which I was to pay at my convenience and without
interest. To achieve this I had to forego my income for a
long time. And then, monsieur, began the destruction of
some illusions I had allowed myself as to Madame d'Espard's
character. When I proposed to her that we should leave
Paris and go into the country, where we could live respected
on half of her income, and so more rapidly complete a resti-
tution of which I spoke to her without going into the more
serious details, Madame d'Espard treated me as a madman.
I then understood my wife's real character. She would have
approved of my grandfather's conduct without a scruple, and
have laughed at the Huguenots. Terrified by her coldness, and
her little affection for her children, whom she abandoned to
me without a regret, I determined to leave her the command
of her fortune, after paying our common debts. It was no
business of hers, as she told me, to pay for my follies. As
I then had not enough to live on and pay for my sons' educa-
tion, I determined to educate them myself, to make them
gentlemen and men of feeling. By investing my money in
the funds I have been enabled to pay off my obligation sooner
than I had dared to hope, for I took advantage of the op-
portunities afforded by the improvement in prices. If I
had kept four thousand francs a year for my boys and my-
self, I could only have paid off twenty thousand crowns
a year, and it would have taken almost eighteen years to
achieve my freedom. As it is, I have lately repaid the whole
of the eleven hundred thousand francs that were due. Thus
I enjoy the happiness of having made this restitution without
doing my children the smallest wrong.

"These, monsieur, are the reasons for the payments made
to Madame Jeanrenaud and her son."

THE COMMISSION IN LtJNAOt 373

"So Madame d'Espard knew the motives of your retire-
ment ?" said the judge, controlling the emotion he felt at
this narrative.

"Yes, monsieur."

Popinot gave an expressive shrug; he rose and opened the
door into the next room.

"Noel, you can go," said he to his cleric

"Monsieur," he went on, "though what you have told me
is enough to enlighten me thoroughly, I should like to hear
what you have to say to the other facts put forward in the
petition. For instance, you are here carrying on a business
such as is not habitually undertaken by a man of rank."

"We cannot discuss that matter here," said the Marquis,
signing to the judge to quit the room. "Nouvion," said he
to the old man, "I am going down to my rooms; the chil-
dren will soon be in; dine with us."

"Then, Monsieur le Marquis," said Popinot on the stairs,
"that is not your apartment?"

"No, monsieur; I took those rooms for the office of this
undertaking. You see," and he pointed to an advertisement
sheet, "the History is being brought out by one of the most
respectable firms in Paris, and not by me."

The Marquis showed the lawyer into the ground-floor
rooms, saying, "This is my apartment."

Popinot was quite touched by the poetry, not aimed at but
pervading this dwelling. The weather was lovely, the win-
dows were open, the air from the garden brought in a whole-
some earthy smell, the sunshine brightened and gilded the
woodwork, of a rather gloomy brown. At the sight Popinot
made up his mind that a madman would hardly be capable
of inventing the tender harmony of which he was at that
moment conscious.

"I should like just such an apartment," thought he. "You
think of leaving this part of the town ?" he inquired.

"I hope so," replied the Marquis. "But I shall remain till
my younger son has finished his studies, and till the children's
character is thoroughly formed, before introducing them to

374 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

the world and to their mother's circle. Indeed, after giving
them the solid information they possess, I intend to com-
plete it by taking them to travel to the capitals of Europe,
that they may see men and things, and become accustomed to
speak the languages they have learned. And, monsieur," he
went on, giving the judge a chair in the drawing-room, "I
could not discuss the book on China with you, in the pres-
ence of an old friend of my family, the Comte de Nouvion,
who, having emigrated, has returned to France without any
fortune whatever, and who is my partner in this concern,
less for my profit than his. Without telling him what my
motives were, I explained to him that I was as poor as he,
but that I had enough money to start a speculation in which
he might be usefully employed. My tutor was the Abbe
Grozier, whom Charles X. on my recommendation appointed
Keeper of the Books at the Arsenal, which were returned
to that Prince when he was still Monsieur. The Abbe Grozier
was deeply learned with regard to China, its manners and
customs ; he made me heir to this knowledge at an age when
it is difficult not to become a fanatic for the things we learn.
At five-and-twenty I knew Chinese, and I confess I have
never been able to check myself in an exclusive admiration
for that nation, who conquered their conquerors, whose an-
nals extend back indisputably to a period more remote than
mythological or Bible times, who by their immutable institu-
tions have preserved the integrity of their empire, whose
monuments are gigantic, whose administration is perfect,
among whom revolutions are impossible, who have regarded
ideal beauty as a barren element in art, who have carried
luxury and industry to such a pitch that we cannot outdo
them in anything, while they are our equals in things where
we believe ourselves superior.

""Still, monsieur, though I often make a jest of comparing
China with the present condition of European states, I am
not a Chinaman, I am a French gentleman. If you enter-
tain any doubts as to the financial side of this undertaking,
I can prove to you that at this moment we have two thousand

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 375

five hundred subscribers to this work, which is literary, icono-
graphical, statistical, and religious; its importance has been
generally appreciated; our subscribers belong to every na-
tion in Europe, we have but twelve hundred in France. Our
book will cost about three hundred francs, and the Comte de
Nouvion will derive from it from six to seven thousand
francs a year, for his comfort was the real motive of the un-
dertaking. For my part, I aimed only at the possibility of
affording my children some pleasures. The hundred thou-
sand francs I have made, quite in spite of myself, will pay;
for their fencing lessons, horses, dress, and theatres, pay the
masters who teach them accomplishments, procure them can-
vases to spoil, the books they may wish to buy, in short, all the
little fancies which a father finds so much pleasure in gratify-
ing. If I had been compelled to refuse these indulgences to
my poor boys, who are so good and work so hard, the sacri-
fice I made to the honor of my name would have been doubly
painful.

"In point of fact, the twelve years I have spent in retire-
ment from the world to educate my children have led to my
being completely forgotten at Court. I have given up the
career of politics; I have lost my historical fortune, and all
the distinctions which I might have acquired and bequeathed
to my children; but our house will have lost nothing; my
boys will be men of mark. Though I have missed the
senatorship, they will win it nobly by devoting themselves
to the affairs of the country, and doing such service as is
not soon forgotten. While purifying the past record of my
family, I have insured it a glorious future; and is not that
to have achieved a noble task, though in secret and without
glory? — And now, monsieur, have you any other explana-
tions to ask me ?"

At this instant the tramp of horses was heard in the court-
yard.

"Here they are !" said the Marquis. In a moment the two
lads, fashionably but plainly dressed, came into the room,
booted, spurred, and gloved, and flourishing their riding-

S76 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

whips. Their beaming faces brought in the freshness of the
outer air ; they were brilliant with health. They both grasped
their father's hand, giving him a look, as friends do, a glance
of unspoken affection, and then they bowed coldly to the law-
yer. Popinot felt that it was quite unnecessary to question
the Marquis as to his relations towards his sons.

"Have you enjoyed yourselves ?" asked the Marquis.

"Yes, father; I knocked down six dolls in twelve shots at
the first trial !" cried Camille.

"And where did you ride ?"

"In the Bois ; we saw my mother."

"Did she stop?"

"We were riding so fast just then that I daresay she did
not see us," replied the young Count.

"But, then, why did you not go to speak to her ?"

"I fancy I have noticed, father, that she does not care that
we should speak to her in public," said Clement in an under-
tone. "We are a little too big."

The judge's hearing was keen enough to catch these words,
which brought a cloud to the Marquis' brow. Popinot took
pleasure in contemplating the picture of the father and his
boys. His eyes went back with a sense of pathos to M.
d'Espard's face; his features, his expression, and his manner
all expressed honesty in its noblest aspect, intellectual and
chivalrous honesty, nobility in all its beauty.

"You — you see, monsieur," said the Marquis, and his hesi-
tation had returned, "you see that Justice may look in — in
here at any time — yes, at any time — here. If there is any-
body crazy, it can only be the children — the children — who
are a little crazy about their father, and the father who is
very crazy about his children — but that sort of madness rings
true."

At this juncture Madame Jeanrenaud's voice was heard in
tfie ante-room, and the good woman came bustling in, in spite
>f the man-servant's remonstrances.

"I take no roundabout ways, I can tell you !" she exclaimed.
Tes, Monsieur le Marquis, I want to speak to you, this

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 377

very minute," she went on, with a comprehensive bow to the
company. "By George, and I am too late as it is, since Mon-
sieur the criminal Judge is before me."

"Criminal !" cried the two boys.

"Good reason why I did not find you at your own house,
since you are here. Well, well ! the Law is always to the fore
when there is mischief brewing. — I came, Monsieur le Mar-
quis, to tell you that my son and I are of one mind to give
you everything back, since our honor is threatened. My son
and I, we had rather give you back everything than cause
you the smallest trouble. My word, they must be as stupid as
pans without handles to call you a lunatic "

"A lunatic! My father?" exclaimed the boys, clinging to
the Marquis. "What is this?"

"Silence, madame," said Popinot.

"Children, leave us," said the Marquis.

The two boys went into the garden without a word, but
very much alarmed.

"Madame," said the judge, "the moneys paid to you by
Monsieur le Marquis were legally due, though given to you
in virtue of a very far-reaching theory of honesty. If all the
people possessed of confiscated goods, by whatever cause, even
if acquired by treachery, were compelled to make restitution
every hundred and fifty years, there would be few legitimate
owners in France. The possessions of Jacques Coeur enriched
twenty noble families; the confiscations pronounced by the
English to the advantage of their adherents at the time when
they held a part of France made the fortune of several
princely houses.

"Our law allows M. d'Espard to dispose of his income with-
out accounting for it, or suffering him to be accused of its
misapplication. A Commission in Lunacy can only be granted
when a man's actions are devoid of reason; but in this case,
the remittances made to you have a reason based on the most
sacred and most honorable motives. Hence you may keep
it all without remorse, and leave the world to misinterpret
a noble action. In Paris, the highest virtue is the object of

378 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

the foulest calumny. It is, unfortunately, the present con-
dition of society that makes the Marquis' actions sublime.
For the honor of my country, I would that such deeds were
regarded as a matter of course; but, as things are, I am
forced by comparison to look upon M. d'Espard as a man to
whom a crown should be awarded, rather than that he should
be threatened with a Commission in Lunacy.

"In the course of a long professional career, I have seen
and heard nothing which has touched me more deeply than
that I have just seen and heard. But it is not extraordinary
that virtue should wear its noblest aspect when it is prac-
tised by men of the highest class.

"Having heard me express myself in this way, I hope, Mon-
sieur le Marquis, that you feel certain of my silence, and that
you will not for a moment be uneasy as to the decision pro-
nounced in the case — if it comes before the Court."

"There, now! Well said," cried Madame Jeanrenaud.
"That is something like a judge! Look here, my dear sir,
I would hug you if I were not so ugly; you speak like a
book."

The Marquis held out his hand to Popinot, who gently
pressed it with a look full of sympathetic comprehension at
this great man in private life, and the Marquis responded
with a pleasant smile. These two natures, both so large and
full — one commonplace but divinely kind, the other lofty and
sublime — had fallen into unison gently, without a jar, with-
out a flash of passion, as though two pure lights had been
merged into one. The father of a whole district felt himself
worthy to grasp the hand of this man who was doubly noble,
and the Marquis felt in the depths of his soul an instinct
that told him that the judge's hand was one of those from
which the treasures of inexhaustible beneficence perennially
flow.

"Monsieur le Marquis," added Popinot, with a bow, "I am
happy to be able to tell you that, from the first words of this
inquiry, I regarded my clerk as quite unnecessary."

He went close to M. d'Espard, led him into the window-bay,

THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY 379

and said : "It is time that you should return home, monsieur.
I believe that Madame la Marquise has acted in this matter
under an influence which you ought at once to counteract."

Popinot withdrew. He looked back several times as he
crossed the courtyard, touched by the recollection of the
scene. It was one of those which take root in the memory
to blossom again in certain hours when the soul seeks consola-
tion.

"Those rooms would just suit me," said he to himself as he
reached home. "If M. d'Espard leaves them, I will take up
his lease."

The next day, at about ten in the morning, Popinot, who
had written out his report the previous evening, made his way
to the Palais de Justice, intending to have prompt and
righteous justice done. As he went into the robing-room to
put on his gown and bands, the usher told him that the
President of his Court begged him to attend in his private
room, where he was waiting for him. Popinot forthwith
obeyed.

"Good-morning, my dear Popinot," said the President, "I
have been waiting for you."

"Why, Monsieur le President, is anything wrong?"

"A mere silly trifle," said the President. "The Keeper of
the Seals, with whom I had the honor of dining yesterday,
led me apart into a corner. He had heard that you had been
to tea with Madame d'Espard, in whose case you were em-
ployed to make inquiries. He gave me to understand that it
would be as well that you should not sit on this case "

"But, Monsieur le President, I can prove that I left
Madame d'Espard's house at the moment when tea was
brought in. And my conscience "

"Yes, yes; the whole Bench, the two Courts, all the pro-
fession know you. I need not repeat what I said about you
to his Eminence; but, you know, 'Caesar's wife must not be
suspected.' So we shall not make this foolish trifle a matter
of discipline, but only of the proprieties. Between ourselves,
it is not on your account, but on that of the Bench."

56

380 THE COMMISSION IN LUNACY

"But, monsieur, if you only knew the kind of woman — — "
said the judge, trying to pull his report out of his pocket.

"I am perfectly certain that you have proceeded in this
matter with the strictest independence of judgment. I my-
self, in the provinces, have often taken more than a cup of
tea with the people I had to try ; but the fact that the Keeper
of the Seals should have mentioned it, and that you might be
talked about, is enough to make the Court avoid any discus-
sion of the matter. Any conflict with public opinion must
always be dangerous for a constitutional body, even when the
right is on its side against the public, because their weapons
are not equal. Journalism may say or suppose anything, and
our dignity forbids us even to reply. In fact, I have spoken
of the matter to your President, and M. Camusot has been
appointed in your place on your retirement, which you will
signify. It is a family matter, so to speak. And I now beg
you to signify your retirement from the case as a personal
favor. To make up, you will get the Cross of the Legion of
Honor, which has so long been due to you. I make that my
business."

When he saw M. Camusot, a judge recently called to Paris
from a provincial Court of the same class, as he went for-
ward bowing to the Judge and the President, Popinot could
not repress an ironical smile. This pale, fair young man,
full of covert ambition, looked ready to hang and unhang,
at the pleasure of any earthly king, the innocent and the
guilty alike, and to follow the example of a Laubardemont
rather than that of a Mole.

Popinot withdrew with a bow ; he scorned to deny the lying
accusation that had been brought against him.

Pabis, February 1836.

Balzac, TT. PQ

2157
Works. .Fl

v.lk